Not sure if this should be here or in GD, but I think we should never, ever have anyone named Bush or Clinton as POTUS again
Welcome to the Dope, catflea12. Political discussions of this sort normally live in Great Debates, but I’m sure a mod will be along shortly if this needs to be moved.
By the way, this Board encourages posters to “flesh out” their OPs a bit more. For example, why shouldn’t any Bush or Clinton ever hold the Presidency again?
Oops, sorry. (can this be moved?) It’s just that I believe both Bush and Clinton really, really sucked at being president
What about the first Bush? I actually thought he did a halfway decent job.
The Clinton/Bush dynastic thing strikes me as weird and creepy as a non-American (and it seems many Americans feel the same way), but I can’t see anything actually wrong with it (apart from weird creepiness, which isn’t really a legal or constitutional barrier, as far as I’m aware).
But what if the Clinton or Bush has no relation to Bill/Hillary or Sr/W? It wouldn’t seem fair to penalize poor Jeffrey Clinton or Angela Bush running for president in 2020 or 2200 just because there have been other presidents with the same last names.
Clinton Q. Bush in 2032!
Bush Sr. did a decent job overall. Bill Clinton did mostly as well. If Bill Clinton didn’t have such a sexual fetish and a tendency towards poor choices, he might be considered one of the better presidents. Instead, the media let us know where the actual priorities got laid. I can see the same being said about Thomas Jefferson is they had cable news channels then.
Moving thread from IMHO to Great Debates.
I, for one, would probably vote for Chelsea when she’s old enough to run.
Most people who don’t like either one of those guys just realistically aren’t going to like any POTUS.
Twenty-four years of alternating between the two families and Hilary Clinton making a try for another four years is enough.
I am wondering if you could clarify whether your concern is the idea of the negative impact of family dynasties in general on a democratic process, or a discomfort with the Clinton and Bush experiences in particular. (Isn’t it 20 years, or did I miss a presidency in there somewhere…?)
Add Adams & Roosevelt to that also.
If it had been Jeb the past eight years, we may well have had a much different perspective, as well as another GOP President-elect now.
Much as I disagreed with many of his positions at the time, and also his wife’s in the last election (though I disagreed with Obama more & voted for Hillary in the primary), I had to admit in 2000 that Clinton was a pretty OK President, if not a particularly good husband.
Give me a competent reasonably conservative Bush or Clinton in any election for the rest of my life & I won’t rule them out.
I made a mistake on my math, it was 20 years, trying for 24. To me, Bush 1 was ineffective, Clinton got a lot of credit for the economy he didn’t deserve (plus the was that pesky sex scandal thing) , Bush 2–what can I say? And my opinion of Hilary is worse than my opinion of her husband. I wouldn’t mind a woman president, just not Hilary
I think its a bit sweeping to totally bar all members of one dynasty from office(Though I can see your point).
Jack Kennedy in this foreigners opinion was a truly great President, but other members of his family who might possibly have assumed the role would most likely have been a disaster judging by some of their rhetoric.
So it appears you are talking about your discomfort with those particular clan members, and not the issue of family dynasty in general.
While it might be politically more difficult (or easier, for that matter) for a family member to be elected based on the performance of a relative, it wouldn’t matter to me. Perhaps my family is unusual but we have both slow-learners and competent folk. The one is not responsible for the behaviour of the other.
I’d vote for Mr Clinton, were he eligible to run for re-election, but not Mrs Clinton. If Chelsea were to run, I’d evaluate her without regard to the performance of either of her parents.
If we (the US) had wanted a dynasty to rule, we would have gone with a king, not an elected president. As far as Kennedy goes, the only reason people think he was so great was because he was killed
Ah. So the choice of governmental structure by Jefferson, Jay, et al. was purely motivated by a desire that one family not rule excessively. I guess John Adams must have been pissed at John Quincy when he was elected, then.
Personally, I don’t think it should be forbidden, but I do think it sets a bad precedent. Out of all of the millions of people in the country, when a close relative of a former president gets elected, it’s hard to convince me that the relationship wasn’t a factor in that selection. And it shouldn’t be.
I’m wary of political dynasties in general. The impact of the Adams and Roosevelt dynasties was attenuated (and rendered more politically tolerable) by the fact that they were spread over many years. But the Bush dynasty had a hiatus of just eight years. The Clintons would too, had Hillary been elected this year, and so would the Kennedys, had Bobby been elected in '68. That’s a bit hard for me to stomach in a huge democracy like ours. Consider this: a Bush or a Clinton was a presidential or VP nominee in every election from 1980-2004. In a country with 300+ million people, we shouldn’t have to keep going back to the same families for our top leaders. It’s kind of banana republic-esque.
That said, I wouldn’t flatly declare that no Clinton or Bush could ever again serve as POTUS. Whether a blood relative or not, there might be an outstanding candidate of either last name out there, and I would never say “never.”