the Clinton/Bush dynasty

Some interesting observations from Fouad Ajami in U.S. News and World Report...

Ironically, the two presidential families have not been all that different-- at least how they operated in tandem with Congress. To note, all of them are closer to each other than to Reagan.

The American promise has always been about new beginnings, men and women inventing and reinventing themselves. Dynasties, and the claims of aristocracy and descent, were for older lands. There were breaches to be sure, and the dynastic element reared its head in the early years of the republic: The sixth president, John Quincy Adams, was the son of the second, John Adams. Dynasticism is unapologetic now; it stalks this election. And a voter from South Carolina put the matter in stark terms, in a question E-mailed to Senator Clinton during a recent debate in California. "I am 38 years old, and I have never had an opportunity to vote in a presidential election in which a Bush or a Clinton wasn't on the ballot."

Wow! I had never thought of that before. I was barely able to vote for Reagan in 1984 or I would be in the same category...

The appearance of the Bush and/or Clinton families on the national ballot the last seven elections—and the bid of Mrs. Clinton for an eighth appearance—are of no small consequence for our political practice. Clinton rides dynasticism but denies it....Her case of standing alone must be reckoned as persuasive as the claim that George W. Bush, too, would have made it to the pinnacle of the political system without pedigree and the claims of political aristocracy....

There is an odd feel to the alternation of two families at the center of political power. In the Arab world, it is taken for granted that leaders bequeath power to their sons. South Asian culture, less riven by male primacy, makes room for the political rise of daughters and widows....

But dynasticism now appears in our midst as the country grows in population and diversity; it visits us in the most "modern" of ways—through branding. The old verities give way, and a nation wired in the extreme reaches for names and brands it knows. Call it covert dynasticism, but Americans now succumb to the spell, and to the magic, of pedigree. The Floridians who voted for Jeb Bush as their governor hardly knew him; he was a president's son, and this did the trick. There is, too, the hold of the Clintons on their followers, something of the unquestioning awe with which people follow leaders in the personalistic politics of the Third World. The political parties in America have hollowed out. This renders the political process open to both insurgents and pedigreed politicians. Barack Obama symbolizes the former, Hillary Clinton the latter....