ABSTRACT
The Bushes were English, which, to some, meant ipso facto aristocracy; in their case, their ancestry was arguably traceable to rulers of old. Whatever the democratic pretense, there are always those eager to tie any American president to the appropriate lineage. When Burke’s Peerage Ltd., the 162-year-old directory that had made a sport out of linking American presidents to the British Crown, weighed in with the thought that George Bush was about to become the “most royal” of American presidents, it seemed entirely credible. That notion, however, could not have been more poorly timed, coming as it did at the outset of his campaign for the presidency—a potential embarrassment for a transplanted New Englander who had long since become a Texan. But Bush, insisted Burke’s, came from a “typical old Yankee family.” 1
