I’m sorry, but I think that’s a very dangerous road you’re travelling on. Once you start saying that the people are too stupid to vote for the right people, it’s a short step to saying that they shouldn’t be allowed to vote for the wrong people.
I mean, of course they’re idiots. But we should never, EVER allow ourselves to say that.
I think the other thing about HRC is that everyone knew (inasmuch as one can know such things) that she had no real interest in being a Senator from NY. That just happened to be the most convenient stepping stone to running for President.
Two things:
The U.S. was founded by rejecting the rule of a dynasty. It’s in our political DNA to have a negative attitude toward them.
In politics, name recognition counts and always has. Anyone with a name that is already known because a family member previously held office has an advantage over other candidates, even if there is absolutely no qualification attached to the name.
I am a Democrat, and was appalled that Democrats would choose Hillary as their candidate when her entire political career was built on being the wife of a popular politician. But, as discussed upthread, given the two choices available, it was obvious that I had to vote for her.
That happen in my city some guy ran for mayor b/c of his ‘last’ name . His dad was a mayor , the son did miserable in the election . Yeah look at all the money that was spend on Jeb campaign all b/c of his last name .
If you read the last paragraph of the post you quoted, you wouldn’t be using it to ask that question.
Thats part of it, but a big part is just the fact that a lot of us want our politicians to be qualified. Being the child, spouse, nephew, etc of a successful politician is not a qualification in and of itself. Politics involves dealing with serious and complicated problems, and just because your dad did it doesn’t mean you are qualified too.
Many people who end up in national politics usually do so either after succeeding in a non-political field (business, military, law, science, etc) and then deciding to try politics. That or they worked their way up the ranks of city or state politics and then got involved in federal politics.
It reminds me of a joke Bill Maher told about Sonny Bono’s wife running for her late husband’s seat after he died in a skiing accident. He said her only qualification to be a politician was that ‘her husband skied into a tree’, which is true. Being married to a politician who died is not a qualification to decide what happens with medicare, medicaid, social security, whether we go to war, the minimum wage, economic policy, etc.
As mentioned before, part of the problem is the feeling/perception that the “dynastic” candidate did not sufficiently “earn” their shot at power by rising through the ranks up from footsoldier.
This is of course somewhat fallacious in the sense that elective political power is not a career service track where every single step has to be gone through requiring a combination of time in service, time in grade, and passing scores in required courses and tests. Most of the people in the top tiers of power, even if relatively self-made like Bill Clinton, got there by building up social and professional relations that one day put them in the right place at the right time, leapfrogging some long-serving veterans along the way. The key thing, of course, is that they are perceived as having *worked *to get to that position of advantage.
Why is it people did not talk about a “Romney dynasty” … because Mitt sought his political career in a state different than his father, and got a whole lot closer to the presidency than his father did? But he definitely was born in scoring position, as the sports metaphor goes.
But, are we going to say, it is good if you went to the right schools and built a network… but not if you were a legacy student? It is good if you try to be a politician like dad… but only if you seek a different office?
To be fair, in practice, you look at the offices downballot and you will see Americans are NOT particularly reticent to support “political dynasties” per se. Descendants, cousins, in-laws keep winding up in congressional delegations and in statehouses and city halls across the nation, decade after decade. Sarbanes or Cardin in Maryland; Daleys in Cook County; Kennedy/Shriver and variations thereof across a whole swath of states, as are Rockefellers; Landrieus in Louisiana; Udalls across the west; Tafts in Ohio; etc.
Somehow, it’s having had someone in the family hit the Presidency, in particular, that makes people stand up and notice. Maybe because until the Kennedys it was rare to have the “dynasty” seek to actively stay in contention for that office contemporaneously. The two Adamses had a 25 year gap. Ben Harrison was the grandson of W.H. Harrison the Very Brief and was elected 48 years later. The Roosevelts were cousins a couple of degrees apart and again separated by over 20 years. However then came the Kennedys and right away it’s make every brother a Senator wherever there’s a seat available, and all seemingly HAD to run or try to run for President – Jack in 60, Bobby in 68, then Ted in 80 even with heavy baggage on his back. Then for the new century come the Bushes and Clintons, in quick succession just leaving 8 year gaps between runs (plus there has been a Bush or a Clinton either in the primaries or the general election in every race since 1980 except for 2012). This gets noticed.
Other factors creating greater discomfort include the rise of the “imperial presidency” where there is such an extreme concentration of power. There is also the creation of the media-celebrity environment around the Kennedys, where even a layabout second cousin getting arrested is “news” and every single direct descendant somehow feels *expected *to at least try to do something politically important. And the voters who support the aforementioned state- and local-level political machines may be perfectly at peace with how they are taken care of each in their turf, but worry about the RNC/DNC becoming “privatized” and the way up for their hometown boy or gal getting choked off.
Heh, just realized I’m posting this from Jimmy Panetta’s Congressional district. 
they say a Kennedy never lost an election in Mass. Still true? I know they have lost in other states.
A “None of The Above” line on the ballot would go a long way to preventing this sort of thing. As it stands now it is a choice between really bad, and worse. Name recognition helps, so gives them an edge. The local and state races are the feeder elections that produce the national professional grifters that have been impoverishing and wreaking havoc on normal people for the last several decades.
No. That’s just a bad way of looking at things. That’s assuming that inaction doesn’t have consequences, too. Not choosing and letting the worst of two evils win makes you just as responsible.
You should very much vote for the lesser of two evils. In that particular case, it would be Communism, which at least has a good goal, even if the implementations are horrible. Fascism is horrible from the ground up.
With Clinton vs. Trump, you had someone who was a typical politician, with all the bad stuff that comes with that. You know, spinning things in their favor, being wishywashy and doing whatever the people want, clearly having naked ambition and wanting a legacy.
And then you had a conman idiot who announced his hatefulness to the world, and clearly wanted dictatorial level power (not knowing the President isn’t a dictator). Someone who epitomized the evil boss that we’ve known since the 1980s or longer is just corrupt and greedy. A complete and total sleaze with declining mental function who rants like a grandpa who watches too much TV news.
There was very, very clearly a lesser of two evils in this election. Refusing to vote only made it more likely the worst of the two would win.
You will never have a pristine candidate. You will always, at some level, be voting for the lesser of two evils. We used to understand this as a country. We’d talk about how bad politicians were, but we’d still vote for them, because, as bad as that is, the other side was worse.
But this time, one candidate ran on voter apathy. Make the other person seem just as bad as you. And succeeded beyond what even he expected.
That’s what elites think, though. That’s the whole idea behind guided democracy since the early 20th century, and certainly post WWII, which showed the dangers of pandering to the public’s id, especially as the world has only grown more complex and interconnected.
You appear to defeat yourself here since your reasoning (with which I wholeheartedly agree) leads you to a conclusion that you say you won’t accept, at least not yet.
The problem is that there are a number of things that will assist one to be elected to any office. One of those is simple name recognition. People are comfortable with the familiar. Name recognition will of itself garner some votes. Name recognition will get you free publicity which will help garner more votes.
My guess is that there are more donkeys that will vote for name recognition than there are are protestors who vote against those who are getting an unfair advantage due to name recognition
Well put, and that’s not exclusive to politics either. It explains why many employers hire the people they know personally over people who walk in off the street and hand them a sterling resume. People like dealing with the known versus the lesser known. And yet for all of the complaining about dynasties, we’re living in a time when having name recognition is just as much of a liability as an asset, so I’m not sure what people are really complaining about.
As I mentioned up-thread, I think people just want someone to blame for their miserable politics other than ourselves. Conservatives who beat their chests shouting “USA! USA! USA!” while voting for Bush in 2000 and 2004 want to distance themselves from their misinformed voting behavior, as I am sure they will want to in a few years time when people remind them of their votes for Trump. They’ll say “Well shit, the only choice I had was Al Gore or John Kerry or KILLARY!” – yeah, and actually they weren’t bad choices when you consider the fucking alternatives and their results. Might have avoided a few costly wars, a financial crisis, and a judiciary that believes unlimited money from anonymous, unaccountable sources is “speech”. And progressives want to downplay the consequences of sitting out midterm elections that would have allowed Obama to hold serve and push through even more of his progressive agenda. And they will surely want to avoid being reminded that they actually did have an alternative to a despotic minded Donald Trump. People want to believe that the reason our politics is messed up is because we have no choices; to the contrary, we’ve had plenty of reasonably good choices but we keep wasting them.
I didn’t say that people shouldn’t have the right to vote and I don’t know why you made that inference. I believe I said that people should stop blaming dynasties for what’s wrong with our democracies and maybe focus a little more on their own voting behavior. Some of the country’s best leaders have come from dynasties, so it’s possible to have another Roosevelt, another Kennedy, or even another Clinton or Obama manage the affairs of the country effectively. By that same token, it’s also possible to have a horribly under-qualified Bush come along and undo it all. But in either case, voters have to look at the policies that they’re voting for and not just the name. That’s true whether a voter decides to vote for a name-brand candidate or a virtual unknown.
The danger I see in this mindless attack on dynasties is two-fold. One, we’re not really identifying the true culprits in what’s wrong with our system, which is an entertainment driven society that knows a lot about what’s happening with reality TV but doesn’t know much about politics anymore. And the other issue is that we’re waiting for some a magic knight in shining armor to come save us from ourselves. That’s not going to happen. We’re only going to push back when every person understands that voting and being informed aren’t just rights but civic duties, boring as they sometimes may be.
Just because one thing is wrong, that doesn’t mean that something else can’t be wrong, too. Yes, all of your complaints have merit - but that still doesn’t make political dynasties any less bad.
I think it is about who the best person for the job is, but in some cases that could result in a “dynasty.” For all the folks basing W and the idea of a Bush dynasty think about this. Wouldn’t we all be better off if Jeb had won rather than Trump? Even though Trump’s grade is still incomplete, I think W was definitely a better president than Trump has been (and no, it’s not even close, W was way better than Trump has been). This is me, a staunch liberal, making a case for a Republican dynasty. They aren’t inherently good, but certainly aren’t inherently bad either. As others have mentioned above, think about the Roosevelts. FDR was one of our best presidents, and being a relative of Teddy wasn’t a hinderance to him.
They’re not “bad” because you say they are or because you wish there were some kind of magic candidate that doesn’t exist. The political process is inherently one that is selective – it subjects people to levels of scrutiny that most ordinary people, even individuals who are extremely intelligent and perhaps have great ideas on how to run the country, aren’t willing to subject themselves to. Perhaps that is one reason among several that dynasties occur: people who are accustomed to that scrutiny are able to outperform those who are not on the big stage. Though again, the advantages of incumbency and name recognition can cut both ways, just as being a dark horse can.
It’s not just partisan. I thought that dynasties were a bad idea back when W was running, and I still thought they were bad both times that Hillary was running, and I think that historically, it was a bad idea for the Adamses and the Harrisons. Both times that Hillary ran, I voted for her opponent in the primary, partly for that reason. In 2016, when it came time for the general election, I held my nose and voted for her anyway, because the alternative was so much worse, but there are still an awful lot of people I would have preferred to vote for instead.
Alessan has done a pretty good job of summarizing why I think dynasties are bad. A lot of people, though, clearly like them. I often think we’d be better off with something like the British system, with a hereditary monarchy to satisfy the people’s urges in that direction, but with essentially no actual power.
All that really says is that dynasties aren’t the worst thing in the world. Anyone who voted for Clinton over Trump already acknowledges that. But there are a lot of other presidents under whom we’d be even better off than Jeb, most of whom are not members of dynasties.