Is the US unique in its high ratio of familial relationships in White House incumbent

Factual Questions
1

I’m not a student of history, but I cannot find in any simple search a study of whether the US system has some special attribute that leads to so many members of the same families occupying the highest office. This thought was kicked off today by a column in the NY Times that said that Jed Bush was a strong candidate for the presidency in 2008.

There are no less than 8 close family relationships in the 43 presidencies
John Adams / John Quincy Adams (father/son)
William Henry Harrison/Benjamin Harrison (grandfather/grandson)
Theodore Roosevelt/Franklin D Roosevelt (uncle/nephew)
George Bush/George W Bush (father/son).

In addition, a realistic view could be that only a bullet and a bridge have kept Bobby and Ted Kennedy respectively from following their brother. Another obvious possibility for 2008 is Hilary Clinton.

In the UK, I think only one such relationship exists out of the 51 PMs since 1721 (William Pitt the Elder/the Younger). There are none in Austrlia’s 25 PMs to date or in Canada’s 20 since 1867. In Europe, there are none in France’s 22 Presidents since the Third Republic (all these are subject to correction if I’m wrong).

Please note - this is a genuine point of interest, not intended as a stimulus for diatribes by hotheads against the neocolonialist/imperialist/fascist/whatever style of government in the US.

2

I guess you mean in democracies, as opposed to monarchies?

3

India has the Nehru-Ghandi dynasty.

4

No, he mentioned the UK, so I’m wondering about the House of Windsor, for starters.

5

The UK, France, Canada and other places do indeed have elected officials who run the country. The elected office is “Prime Minister” in the UK, and may have other titles in other parts of the world.

There are also monarchs in some places, who are (for all practical purposes) outside the actual governing process.

I think the OP is an interesting question; why does the US appear to have a high incidence of related elected presidents?

6

Well, first of all, Theodore Roosevelt was not Franklin D. Roosevelt’s uncle. Not sure where rampisad got that idea. FDR was Teddy’s fifth cousin - fourth cousin and then nephew by marriage, IIRC. They were VERY DISTANTLY related. So in all fairness, I think there are only three geniune connections; Harrison, Bush, and Adams.

3 out of 43 isn’t that significant. In 220 years, the U.S. has had a few successfully ambitious kids.

7

Sorry - I thought it was obvious that I’m talking about democracies - after all, familial relationships is a feature of monarchies.

8

As others have mentioned, the situation in the U.S. is not unique, even among democracies. In India, Nehru was PM, as was his daughter (Indira Gandhi) and his grandson (Rajiv Gandhi).

But that said, yes, I agree that family name counts more in the U.S. than in many other countries Why? Several reasons.

First, the U.S. does not have a parliamentary system, so people are voting for a PERSON as their #1 leader. In nations with a parliamentary system, voters select a local representative from their preferred party. That is, an Englishmen doesn’t vote for Tony Blair as Prime Minister; rather, he votes for a Labourite as his local representative (MP), and if the Labour Party has a majority in Parliament, the Labour MPs elect Tony Blair as Prime Minister. So, in a Parliamentary system, people aren’t so much voting for a person as they are for a party and an ideology.

In the U.S., on the other hand, the people elect the President directly, and they choose the candidates for each party by voting in primaries.

This makes a HUGE difference in how campaigns are conducted. In order to become the leading candidate for Prime Minister, a British politician doesn’t have to be well-known or well-liked by ordinary voters, he just has to be well-known and well-respected by the most prominent members of his party. It’s entirely possible the next candidate of the Tories could be someone that most Englishmen have barely even heard of. So long as the higher-ups of the Conservative Party know and like him, he has a chance.

In the U.S., it’s different. If a politician wants to be the candidate for a major party, he has to win a series of primary elections in several different states. That’s not easy! Right now, for instance, Vermont Governor Howard Dean has stated that he’s running for President. He wants to be the Democratic candidate for President in 2004. Is he a decent man, an intelligent man, a viable candidate? From what I’ve read and heard, yes. But right now, outside of Vermont, MOST Americans have no idea who Howard Dean is. They’ve simply never heard of him. So, how is he supposed to win primary elections in states like New York, California, Texas, Florida and Ohio?

Mr. Dean will have to spend a LOT of money for advertising, just to get people to recognize his name. Not to WIN, mind you! He’ll have to spend millions of dollars JUST so that people will know who he is! And assuming he succeeds, he’ll have to spend millions MORE to convince people to vote for him.

Do you see now how helpful it is to have a famous name? Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush may or may not be your favorite politicians, but if they decide to run for President in 2008, they WON’T have to spend so much money to get name recognition. Everybody already KNOWS who they are! That’s a HUGE advantage.
No matter how much money a Howard Dean spends, his name probably won’t be as well-known as Hillary Clinton’s. No matter how tirelessly John McCain worked the media, he couldn’t achieve the name recognition George W. Bush had just by being born into the right family.

9

RickJay - missed your post.

You’re right about the 5th cousin bit - my memory is killing me today. but I’ve another quote than sort of fits in with my OP

10

Another reason for the high incidence of related presidents is the shear number of guys who have held office. 220 years with either four or eight year terms give you a lot of guys. Next in the presidential time line comes France. And they managed a couple of kings before settling down to seven year terms of office (with no limits on re-election).l

11

Interestingly, Lyon G. Tyler, president of William and Mary in 1914 (and a grandson of President John Tyler), defined the FFVs as families who were represented in the Virginia governor’s office or the colonial council, prior to the American Revolution, I assume. Virginians, West Virginians, and perhaps even our friends across the pond may note with interest this list of names:

And of course, there is an Order of First Families of Virginia as well, created in part to “correct the innumerable instances of subversive propaganda concerning the nation’s foundation history that are continually appearing in literature, the daily press and over the air.” Ahem. Yeah.

I notice that of Virginia and West Virginia’s four current Senators, two of them, Robert C. Byrd and John Warner, appear to be of FFV stock. And who is the junior Senator from West Virginia? John D. Rockefeller IV, of course. Gotta keep the nouveaux riche in their place, don’t you know.

It seems clear to me that familial connections can play a role in American politics, for the reasons astorian noted above but probably also because prominent wealthy families tend to know other prominent wealthy families, opening the door to big money and widely dispersed political influence. Starting someone out a few dozen rungs above the proles probably helps considerably.

12

I would be interested in any posts showing the name and vital info on the common ancestor of Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt. Their relationship was apparently widely reported at the time both were politically active, but who was their supposedly common grandfather? My searches have yet to find him.

I remember being furnished my “Morgan” line back to the 1600s and noticed a father/son relationship back about 1800. I wrote the individual who furnished the genealogy to me, asking simply how do we know that our William was a son of that Samuel. The response, honest to God was , “they’re both Morgans, aren’t they”.

Some folks love to claim ancestry to the famous or infamous based upon little more than rumor.

13

The funny thing about this is that Eleanor Roosevelt was his fifth cousin (once removed) as well, so it was by birth AND by marriage.

aahala, here is the Roosevelt family tree. Looks like the common ancestor was Nicholas Roosevelt, 1658-1742.

14

I think this was the point of the critique; by limiting your conversation to democracies, you’re ignoring what is, in human history, probably the most prevalent form of choosing a leader, namely, paternity.

–Cliffy

15

Cliffy

Yaaahhhh!!

What wold be the point of starting a thread that comments on the fact that in monarchies, the pattern of succession tends to follow the familial line. Duh! In a monarchy, a succession that does not follow the family line is called a revolution.

No sir, it gives you exactly 43 guys, as my OP stated. There have been more PMs in England, with fewer relatives, and half as many in Canada and Australia, with no relatives.

Thank you for an excellent posting, it really seems to hit the head on the nail. For general interest, I left out countries like India, Israel etc which have been democracies for less than 50 years, since I thought it would skew the discussion. After all, you could say that South Africa has also never had a familial descent, but they’ve only had 2 Presidents.:o

16

The absolute number of “family connection” Presidents is rather small and somewhat widely dispersed over time. I just don’t see any one specific factor of the institution that favors this phenomenon.

The popular presidential primary was not the main factor in presidential selection until quite recently: arguably, the election of 1960. Likewise, television cannot be said to have influenced the people’s choice until, perhaps, the 1952 contest. (Of course, radio was a factor before that, and the popular press since the earliest days of the republic.) IOt strikes me that it is only with the Bushes that we have a credible case of the electorate saying, “like father, like son–he’s got my vote.”

FDR was already a known national figure when he ran in 1932: he had been on the ticket as veep in (I think) 1920, and had been a cabinet official under Woodrow Wilson. I don’t know whether he made much of his complicated relationship to Teddy, but I’ve never heard that aging Rooseveltians (getting rather long in the tooth in '32, and mostly Republican as well) voted in droves for the Democratic candidate, then or later. Perhaps the main benefit to FDR of the relationship came early in his career, propelling him forward in the Wilson administration.

The Harrisons?? You gotta be kidding. William Henry died from pneumonia caught in connection with his lengthy inaugural speech, and accomplished nothing whatsoever. As I recall, Benjamin was a party hack who toed the line on whatever the burning issue of the day was; it’s news to me if his grandsonship did anything more than make him a member of America’s upper tier of families–along with a great many others.

The two Adamses were selected by the method used in the period between George Washington and Andrew Jackson, namely the congressional party caucus–perhaps as close as we’ve come to a parliamentary-style system. It may well be that in this one case the familial relationship was key.

But note also that family relations can work negatively in America. FDR’s sons had presidential ambitions–and went nowhere. I think it doubtful that either Bobby Kennedy or Teddy would ever have won a presidential election, and their various kids are bombing; I believe LBJ’s son-in-law ran for some biggish office and lost; Maureen Reagan tried for a Senate nomination and lost; neither the lawyer-husband of the former Tricia Nixon nor David Eisenhower, husband of Julie Nixon and great-nephew of Ike, has sought to move up; Woodrow Wilson’s son-in-law James McAdoo was denied the democratic nomination; nor have we had to date any sequels to Carter or Ford.

And by the way–what is the proper way to deal with the statistics in a case like this? It’s surely not “3 out of 43”–each of the 3 is actually a pair. But “6 of 43” doesn’t seem quite right either: by definition, selecting for pairs automatically double-weights the selectee with respect to the real question, “What are the odds that a given presidency will be filed by a person who is a relative of another president?”

17

[minor nitpick]

It’s actually either 6 out of 42, unless you’re a Talmudic afficianado. There is a rule in the Talmud of adam karov l’atzmo, a person is considered his own relative. So, therefore, Grover Cleveland (the 22nd president) was related to Grover Cleveland (the 24th president) and the result is 8 out of 43. :smiley:

Zev Steinhardt

18

George W. Bush is related to two former presidents. His father, of course. And, on his mother’s side, Franklin Pierce.

19

Also, in Great Britain, William W. Grenville (1806-07) was the son of George Grenville (1763-65). Sons and daughters of former leaders have also been democratically elected in Greece, Indonesia, and Pakistan.

20

We’ve not had a father/son (or other close relation) pair among Canadian Prime Ministers, but some people are pushing Justin Trudeau, son of late PM Pierre Trudeau, to get into politics. Aside from the magic Trudeau name, I can’t personally see any reason for the pressure. Justin himself is in no rush.

Interestingly, even communist countries are not immune to hereditary transfers of power, something you’d think communists would find unacceptable. North Korean rule went from father to son (Kim Il Sung to Kim Jong Il) and Rumanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu probably would have set up one of his sons had the whole familny not been slaughtered Romanov-style in 1989.