With Hillary Clinton and her surrogates piling on about the (presumably male) politics of "pile-on", it is easy to forget how much she has benefited from that system, and from all the trappings of privilege that the Clinton machine commands.
That a woman is for the first time a serious contender for the US presidency, actually the frontrunner, is a happy fact. But in this case, it unfortunately says less about the country's newly opened mind than it does about the strengthening grip of dynastic succession on US political power.
If Hillary Clinton is on the Democratic ticket in 2008, it will mark the eighth consecutive time that a Clinton or a Bush achieves that feat. If she gets elected and completes two terms, it will mean that a Clinton or a Bush will have been President or Vice President for 36 consecutive years. Anyone born after 1979 will not have known a White House without a member of either dynasty.
This makes the political systems of the Philippines, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka, heretofore considered bastions of contemporary familial cronyism, look open and accessible. It also makes the United States look increasingly medieval.
I don't share my European compatriots' smugness (at least not on this topic) about Americans' having chosen George W. Bush not once by twice (yes, I know, really only once, but however he got there the first time, he got there). People who voted for politicians as corrupt and inept as Silvio Berlusconi in Italy or Jacques Chirac in France, or as spineless (at least on Iraq) as Tony Blair, or as lethally frightening as Vladimir Putin, should feel no sense of superiority about their own political judgment.
However, I am frustrated with the recent silver-spoon presidential nominees from both parties (Bush, Gore, Kerry), and now feel mild disgust that in a country of 300 million we are limited to choosing between an inbred clan of increasingly dumb offspring, the Bushes, and an intellectually superior but faintly corrupt budding line of rulers, the Clintons. It would have been unfathomable just a few years ago that I would miss anything about Ronald Reagan, but here I am, nostalgic for his simple, somewhat obscure background and the fact that he came and went without any single child, step-child, wife, brother, sister, niece or nephew remotely aspiring to anything more than an occasional TV gig.
So whatever you think of John Edwards and Barack Obama, or (God forbid) Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee, at the very least they are where they are through their own work, luck, wiliness, corruption, whatever, but it IS their own and no one else's. And perhaps in 2012 or 2016 one of the small but talented group of governors or senators who are self-made women will emerge to take on both the male power structure and the Clinton/Bush dynasty.
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That should open the US Government to some fresh ideas, and purge a major part of our Nation's current problems as well.
1. The aristocratic, wealthy, connected clans, who take care of their own. Not just the Bushes, but also the Kennedys, Dodds, Landrieus, Bayhs, Romneys, etc.
2. The machine politician types, who work their way up with determined ambition and are willing to do pretty much whatever it takes, people like Giuliani, Edwards, Bill Clinton.
The interesting thing about Hillary is that she is a mix of both at this point.
And by the end of the day, money in politics has restricted our choices since a long time ago. The prospect of 36 years with a Bush or Clinton in the executive is just one of the absurd consequences of this poisonous influence. But the bug infected the system a long time ago.
No, Republicans only worry about dynasties when the last name is Kennedy or Clinton. And they actually put up a trial balloon, when Reagan was President, to repeal the 22nd Amendment (passed by a Republican Congress to prevent another Democrat like FDR, elected 4 times in a row, from holding office for more than 2 terms).
In the Oct. 29, New Yorker (Comment/Dynastic Voyage) Hertzberg provides some much needed context:
START QUOTES
"the Lee family, of Virginia, got to work spawning two signers of the Declaration of Independence, three governors, two senators, nine members of Congress, and four Confederate generals, including Robert E. (The Lees’ Washington, Randolph, and Harrison in-laws won some elections, too.) The New Jersey Frelinghuysens are well into their third century of political droit du seigneur, from Frederick (born 1753), a delegate to the Continental Congress and later a United States senator, through Rodney (born 1946), a current member of the House of Representatives."
"... a plenitude of political patriarchies—not only Kennedys, Lodges, Hugheses, and McCormacks but also Bayhs, Browns, Cuomos, Daleys, Dodds, Longs, La Follettes, Romneys, Tafts, and Udalls (to say nothing of Bushes and Clintons)"
"At the Presidential level, the Bushes 41 and 43 were preceded by the Adamses 2 and 6, the Harrisons 9 and 23, and, of course, the Roosevelts 26 and 32."
"Of the two hundred and forty-four women who have served in the House and the Senate, forty-six succeeded their husbands and twelve their fathers."
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We should focus on what the candidates believe in, what their records show, what they are proposing to do, and hope that we choose a President who will undo the enormous damage done to our democracy by Bush-Cheney and the neocons.
Are you not being just a bit too kind?
By no stretch of the imagination are the Clintons "dynastic."
They got to where they are through education and years of public service.
The Clintons do not pose the same dynastic threat that other powerful political families do. You can hardly compare them to the Bushes or the Kennedys.
Neither Clinton (Bill or Hillary) came from wealth or privilege; neither came from a powerful political clan. In fact, Clinton wasn't even a political brand name until maybe 15 years ago. And I doubt it will be 15 years from you.
These two people are where they are entirely because of their own smarts, hardwork, scheming, whatever. They are NOT like the Bushes at all.
And, if you're going to criticize them, then about the fact that ALL the major candidates from both parties are millionaires - Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Romney, Thompson, Guiliani.
What does that say about the political culture?
Okay, you offer us the inbred clan of Bushes and the intellectually superior but FAINTLY corrupt Clintons. Give me a freaking break!
Why don't you make yourself clear? After what the inbred clan of Bushes have done to us, I'd take anyone that has a progressive thought in their head.
This is ridiculous having the two most dysfunctional families in politics running our government. We wonder why we are failing as a country and yet fail to see the cause. Bush and Clinton.
The only way this country can change and move forward is to stop doing this to ourselves. they are enriching themselves and their cronies at our expense and yet they keep being elected to run the country.
While everyone says how experienced Hillary is and Obama is not, the truth is he has more experience - 20 years - than she does.
She owes her career to her name, just like Bush. Not to any real accomplishment.
It is interesting that the progressive historian Charles Beard, who was active in the earlier decades of the 20th century, thought the Adamses someting like the nation's first family. John Adams succeeded Washington in the Presidency; his son John Quincy came to be President; and two generations later, Henry Adams was a very distinguished intellectual commentator. I don't believe their eminence can be faulted on dynastic grounds.
It wasn't.
Sure it would be nice to have someone in office who would drastically slow the harmful policies of the Reagan II / Bush Jr. regime we've suffered.
But I would have liked to have thought we could have aimed for more by now.
If you prefer to identify with Hillary Clinton's biography over really challenging the trends, power corruption, and policies which have been doing us in for 30 odd years now, go ahead.
But don't dare try to claim that that is the best we can do.
We have to hit the road running in Jan. 09 and can use all the experience we can get. Who gives a %%&&4 if it has been a Bush/Clinto/Bush/Clinton as long as the last one is a Clinton we should be OK.
Say you're around 51 years old or younger. There has never been a time in your life when there was not a Texan running for either Vice President or President.
(51 years old - born 1956 and eligible to vote at age of 21* (at that time). First eligible election to vote - 1980)
Here's your choices:
1980- Bush(VP) (Texan)
1984- Bush (VP) (Texan)
1988- Bush (Texan) (Lloyd Benson VP)-Texan)
1992- Bush (Texan) Perot (Texan)
1996- Perot (Texan)
2000- Bush (Texan) (Dick Cheney (VP)- Texan)
2004- Bush (Texan) (Dick Cheney (VP)- Texan)
2008- Paul (?)
WAKE UP CALL! WAKE UP CALL!
Dude, Bush II is a sequel to
Bush I which is a sequel to
Reagan II which is a sequel to
Reagan I which is a sequel to
Ford which is a sequel to
NIXON
EVERYONE that kissed Nixons Nazi butt back in the day
HAS BEEN PART of the Bush crime family "team"
THE REAL STORY:
DESTROYING THE NIXON/REAGAN/BUSH GOP
once and for all! Take back America.