A Bushie, or less commonly, Bushite or Bushy, is a term referring to a political supporter of George H. W. Bush

George H. W. Bush

George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...

 or George W. Bush

George W. Bush

George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

. More specifically, it is used to denote the inner circle of Bush advisors, appointees, and acolytes. The label carries much the same meaning as the terms "Reaganite" and "Clintonista," which are used to denote aides and followers of Presidents Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan

Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....

 and Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...

, respectively.

History

Although the term has a longer recorded usage, it first came to prominence with the 1993 John Podhoretz

John Podhoretz

John Podhoretz is an American neoconservative columnist for the New York Post, the editor of Commentary magazine, the author of several books on politics, and a former presidential speechwriter.-Life and career:...

 book about his experiences working for the George H. W. Bush White House

White House

The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...

, Hell of a Ride. According to reviewer Jonathan Yardley

Jonathan Yardley

Jonathan Yardley is a book critic at The Washington Post, and at one time of the Washington Star. In 1981 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.-Background and education:...

 of the Washington Post,

A Bushie is defined by Podhoretz as "someone either directly beholden to [George Herbert Walker Bush] or someone to whom Bush was directly beholden," someone who could prove himself to interviewers in the Bush job- appointments team as having "Bush experience," meaning not "general Republican experience, perhaps working on a Senate race in Idaho or something, but ... Bush experience solely."

The term was also defined by David Brooks

David Brooks (journalist)

David Brooks is a Canadian-born political and cultural commentator who considers himself a moderate and writes for the New York Times...

 in a review of the 2001 book Reagan In His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan That Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America. Brooks differentiated Reaganites and Bushies as types of Republicans. While Reaganites were often Hayek

Friedrich Hayek

Friedrich August Hayek CH , born in Austria-Hungary as Friedrich August von Hayek, was an economist and philosopher best known for his defense of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism against socialist and collectivist thought...

ian academics connected to think tank

Think tank

A think tank is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax...

s, Bushies tended to be "boring" corporate careerists with "neat desks and thin briefcases because their reading comes in the form of memos", who saw themselves as "master managers" and politics as a "competition of interests" rather than ideas. Although Brooks acknowledged that both groups were skeptical of government, their skepticism took different forms, with the Reaganites viewing the Bushies as skilled at political or bureaucratic wrangling, but lacking principles. According to Brooks, the failure of the Bushies in the first two years of the elder Bush administration, which led to major losses in the 1992 Congressional elections, brought about the ascendancy of "ideologues" such as Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich

Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich is a U.S. Republican Party politician who served as the House Minority Whip from 1989 to 1995 and as the 58th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999....

 and Dick Armey

Dick Armey

Richard Keith "Dick" Armey is a former U.S. Representative from Texas's and House Majority Leader . He was one of the engineers of the "Republican Revolution" of the 1990s, in which Republicans were elected to majorities of both houses of Congress for the first time in four decades. Armey was...

, but their "uncompromising" approach once again returned the reins of the party to the Bushies by the 2000 election, in which George W. Bush was elected.

The term became prominent during the investigation of the controversial replacement of several U.S. Attorneys

Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy

The dismissal of U.S. Attorneys controversy was initiated by the unprecedented midterm dismissal of seven United States Attorneys on December 7, 2006 by the George W. Bush administration's Department of Justice. Congressional investigations focused on whether the Department of Justice and the White...

 when it was revealed that Justice Department official Kyle Sampson

Kyle Sampson

D. Kyle Sampson was the Chief of Staff and Counselor of United States Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. He resigned on March 12, 2007, amid the controversy surrounding the firing of eight United States Attorneys in 2006 and was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing in July 2010...

 suggested in an e-mail to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft

John Ashcroft

John David Ashcroft is a United States politician who served as the 79th United States Attorney General, from 2001 until 2005, appointed by President George W. Bush. Ashcroft previously served as the 50th Governor of Missouri and a U.S...

 that

we would like to replace 15-20 percent of the current U.S. Attorneys -- the underperforming ones . . . The vast majority of U.S. Attorneys, 80-85 percent, I would guess, are doing a great job, are loyal Bushies, etc., etc."

According to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid

Harry Reid

Harry Mason Reid is the senior United States Senator from Nevada, serving since 1987. A member of the Democratic Party, he has been the Senate Majority Leader since January 2007, having previously served as Minority Leader and Minority and Majority Whip.Previously, Reid was a member of the U.S...

, a Democrat

Democratic Party (United States)

The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

,

The real question is whether being a "loyal Bushie" meant letting partisan considerations poison law enforcement decisions.... The actions of the Bush Administration call into question every decision by federal prosecutors in corruption cases across the country.