DI NASTIES.(comparison: dynasties of the Bushes and the Windsors)

November has been such an all-round triumph for the Bushes, what with the President's sweep of the congressional races, the thumping reelection of the President's kid brother to the governorship of Florida, and the fifteen-nil Security Council vote for the President's resolution on Iraq, that the Times decided to give the whole family a promotion. In the Week in Review section of last Sunday's paper, the headline "Flying Colors: Defying Expectations, a Bush Dynasty Begins to Look Real" was superimposed in white against the blue sky of a heroic, page-wide photograph of Air Force One. So it's official. They're a dynasty. They're up there with the Adamses, the Bonapartes, and the Mings.

Meanwhile, in other dynastic news the Windsor family, of London, England, has been having a bad crown day. Annus horribilis has stretched into centuria calamitosa. In the din of an uproar surrounding one Paul Burrell, a butler in the employ of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, a story has emerged that combines elements of "Scoop," "Love in a Cold Climate," and "Jeeves in the Offing." The picture is one of a palace in which a midafternoon homosexual rape is covered up by Prince Charles; Prince Philip sends his daughter-in-law a note calling her a "trollop"; and the distressed Princess--queen of drama if never of England, empress of aromatherapy if never of India--tries insistently to summon her doctor boyfriend, who happens to be performing open-heart surgery at the time. (Burrell, having sold his story for big bob to the Daily Mirror, was in New York last week, pondering such offers as a game show to be called "What the Butler Saw.") Some of this is mere allegation, but it must be said that past experience with the Windsors argues for a suspension of disbelief. (Squidgy, anyone?) The wacky self-regard, the gothic morbidity, the sheer weirdness of the Windsor Bunch makes the prospect of the holidays with one's own relatives somewhat easier to take. This is a family in which even the Queen is a paranoiac. Last week, Burrell went on British television and recalled what he said was a three-hour-long conversation with the ordinarily conversation-resistant monarch. At one point, Burrell said, the Queen told him, "Be careful, Paul. There are powers at work in this country of which we have no knowledge." By midweek, the breakfast shows were playing host to republicans arguing for an end to it all. Perhaps they are the dark powers.

The Bushes, for their part, are no slouches in the petty-scandal department. But our tabloids are a lot tamer than the old country's. The United States has nothing like the Mirror or the Sun, which sells close to four million copies on a good day--the equivalent, proportionately, of an American daily with a circulation of eighteen million. By British standards, our Daily News and even the Post are church newsletters, so the Windsorian devilments of sundry Bushes--the trips to the clink for underage drinking, the drug busts, the parking-lot sex romps, the D.U.I. adventures, the business irregularities--don't provide the kind of lingering, sadistic, never-ending reading pleasure that the British public expects from the family of a Head of State.

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