I simply don’t understand the intense hatred of 1000 burning suns towards any relation of an office holder seeking elected office for themselves. Growing up in a political household, you’re going to be exposed to politics. The same is true if you’re growing up with a professional athlete as a parent.
Obviously, it doesn’t always work out. Life isn’t fair and we all aren’t born with the same opportunities. But this is true of all aspects of life. There are incompetent people holding down all sorts of jobs due to nepotism. There are also incompetent people that have jobs because the manager thinks s/he is hot or they happened to go to the same college.
In electoral politics, the elected person has to go before the voters on a regular basis. This isn’t the same sort of awfulness from dynastic regimes that used to be common. Hillary Clinton ran a grueling campaign for president. She was not born as a queen due to her family, In fact, she only married a future president. Still, if Hillary Rodham had married someone else, I still think she was destined for elected office, and she would have had a better chance should she have launched her career in a different state than Arkansas.
There are some very good examples of political families. Justin Trudeau is seeming to be an excellent prime minister of Canada, perhaps better than his father. Tony Benn was a major force in the UK Labour Party, but Hilary Benn seems far more brilliant and with politics that I far more agree with. Stephen Kinnock is the son of the former UK Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock and also seems destined to be a force in the Labour Party for years to come.
As with most firmly held political principles, it’s generally just an excuse to follow already established ideological opinions. Democrats were staunchly opposed to political dynasties when Bush ran in 2000. Republicans were equally opposed to them when Clinton ran in 2016.
My issue with this is largely about the entitlement people feel because of their last name. Jeb Bush was an example of this and in many ways so was Hillary. It was “their” turn to lead the two parties on to victory. But that didn’t really work out so well, did it?
I’m increasingly of the opinion that going before the people isn’t the cure-all disinfectant we think it is. There’s still something in there about keeping your family in power, a level of corruption. Plus I just don’t trust the people after Trump’s election. I don’t trust them to see actual dictatorial tactics between members of a political dynasty and stop them in their tracks.
Too many of us vote for our tribe, not what’s best for the country.
Some of the most influential political leaders in our country were so-called “dynasties”. The John and John Quincy Adams dynasty, the Roosevelt cousins, the Kennedys.
The problem isn’t dynasties; the problem is the increasingly unqualified voter. The solution isn’t making the country less democratic, though. It’s an understanding among voters that they need to inform themselves and they actually need to participate in the process instead of cynically sitting out elections until they find an ideal candidate to vote for.
If you want to talk about entitlement we can talk about entitled voters who think of voting as their individual right rather than their collective civic duty. “Man, I’m just not gonna vote because none of these candidates are really what I want. Screw the system, bro”:rolleyes:
If one finds both candidates disgusting and immoral then validating either with one’s vote would be a betrayal of all that’s decent.
A voter in the 1930s with a choice of either Nazi or Communist should abstain because both lead to horror. And you are responsible for bringing a bad person to power.
Well I think for starters, Hillary Clinton had a law degree from a prestigious university and in addition to that, it’s clear to anyone that she had a pretty firm grasp of any range of political issues of the day. On this basis, I felt she was qualified and apparently a majority of New York’s voters felt the same.
George W Bush was a business owner and also an Ivy League degree holder, and it’s only fair to use him as the example of what can go wrong when you evaluate someone based on pedigree. That’s why it’s important to go beyond that and actually evaluate someone in terms of how well they seem to understand the issues. It was clear to me - should have been clear to anyone - that Bush had a poor understanding of macroeconomics and global affairs.
People don’t like dynasties because they’re mad at the system and they buy into the notion that everything in their lives is “rigged” against them. I agree that America’s political and economic system is indeed stacking the deck higher and higher against us, but it’s our collective ignorance and getting confused about what really matters and what really doesn’t when it comes to voting for public office.
I don’t understand the idea of the Clintons as a political dynasty. Sure, they are (were) the ultimate power couple. if their daughter and her kids go into politics maybe they’ll become a dynasty.
But I would think a “dynasty” requires more than one generation. And the premise of the OP, that growing up in a political household gives you exposure to politics - certainly wouldn’t apply to them.
Look, it’s like this: a democracy is supposed to be a meritocracy, always electing the most qualified person for the job. Of course, we all know that this isn’t the case in real life - but it’s how it should be. It’s the goal we’re all striving for, right?
And that’s the problem with dynasties. What, exactly is the chance that two people qualified to be President will happen to be in the same family? From a purely mathematical point of view, I’d say that it’s about a zillion to one. So if two people who happen to be related to each other are elected, that can mean one of three things: that the fates somehow rolled a 20 a hundred times in a row (unlikely), that some families are simply genetically superior to everyone else (even less likely), or that we’re not actually living in a meritocracy. And I’m not willing to accept the latter, not quite yet.
No. Given that choice, you do your damnedest to figure out which one is going to do less harm, and then you work to reduce harm in other ways. That’s what we do: we try to mitigate harm, and voting is one way among many.
Or, of course, you can treat voting as the equivalent of a manicure, an exercise that does little beyond making you more attractive to yourself. But I’d rather you use it as a chance to mitigate harm.
I didn’t vote for either major candidate in the 2016 US election, but this isn’t a great example. Whatever your opinion of communism, there’s a huge qualitative difference in how the Nazis ran Germany versus how the Communists ran their quarter of Germany. (Never mind their respective behavior in international affairs).
It isn’t that people think “Dynasties R Bad!”, and then attack the descendants. It’s that people don’t like a particular person, and then INVENT “dynasties R bad” as aq sort of pile-on attack.
It’s closer than anything else, to standing in line to buy something in a store, and finding something near the cash register to toss on top of your pile. Or maybe, like deciding you want to dump your GF/BF, and when you don’t think you have enough excuses to hide the fact that you’re just hot for the new person you just met, you decide to add in complaints about stuff you didn’t really even think about until you decided to dump them.
If people are tired of a dynasty, they can always vote against it, and this year they did. But I think it’s beyond obvious that they still voted for the wrong guy and that either of these dynastic candidates would have been infinitely better at the job than the corrupt narcissist we’re living with now. And if you can’t agree, well then there’s nothing left to discuss. But it goes to show that if you’re whining about dynasties, you’re missing the real problem, which is voter competence. We want to blame everyone else but ourselves for the mess we’re in. We want to blame the media, political action committees, the two parties, and the weather but Americans have this idea that you can just ignore politics 98% of the time and then just catch up on what’s happening later. It doesn’t work that way.
Americans don’t have 100% choice when it comes to picking politicians.
The politician you might want to vote for has to go through a primary first, and those with connections (including family connections) have an advantage there. It’s not a guaranteed advantage, of course (Jeb Bush didn’t make it through the primary, for instance) but it does seem like an unfair advantage.
A loyal Republican might have wanted to see McCain win the 2000 primary but watched in frustration as Bush Jr won the primary instead. As a loyal Republican, they would have voted for Bush Jr anyway. On the other side, a Democratic voter might have supported Bernie Sanders and watched in frustration as Mrs. Clinton won the primary instead. They would have voted Democrat anyway though.
In Jeb Bush’s and Mrs. Clinton’s casee, it was particularly severe. Both had a reputation for being smart but didn’t seem to have a purpose for running, nor did either know how to win an election.
This is all true, but a little too gentle. George W. Bush is exactly what’s rotten with American political dynasties. His presidency was a disaster and it never would have happened if his name was John Smith.
Bush, a failed businessman and political candidate, was propped up all of his adult life by family money and connections. He wasn’t the “owner” of a sports franchise. A bunch of wealthy friends bought the team and gave George a job. His stake was less than 1%.
Texan voters, and republicans nationally, are responsible for what happened next. The problem isn’t so much the that there are political families, but more the idiotic celebrity culture that exists in America and results in affirmative action for losers like Bush.
No, of course they don’t have 100% choice - so what? They have choices, though. They need to start making good ones rather than complaining about the choices they don’t have. Americans could actually support the party that has advocated campaign finance reform and opposed the nominations of judges who believe that unlimited campaign money = free speech. Unfortunately, however, for whatever reason, they haven’t. One third of the country actively votes against its self interests and another third doesn’t participate because it gets disappointed easily.
Again, Bush wasn’t appointed. He wasn’t made king. He was ELECTED. TWICE. By tens of millions of voters. Who’s to blame? An invisible system, or the morons who voted for him?