January 30, 2007

The Daily Troika: The Bush-Clinton Dynasties

Keying off the NH Union Leader's announcement that ex-Presidents Bush and President Clinton would deliver a joint commencement address at the University of New Hampshire on 5/19, political sicentist and Hotline friend Dante Scala is quoted as saying that "The more Bush-41 and Bill Clinton appear together, the less vulnerable Hillary Clinton is to very vitriolic Republican attacks."

Which may be true. But arguably, it serves to reinforce what may be her biggest problem: Americans may be fed up with -- and will vote actively against -- the perpetuation of political dynasties. Without Pres. Clinton, Sen. Clinton would not be able to claim eight years' worth of White House experience. Without his father's connections, Pres. Bush might be a brush-clearing rancher. Forget the psychodynamics of sons or wives fighting their father or husbands' last battles: voters in presidential elections tend to be retrospective. Will they want another eight years of the Clintons? Or will they want -- after 24 years -- something new? Incidentally, political parties don't like dynasties either because they often privilege parochial concerns (family legacy, personal revenge) over party-building, ideological purity and substance. One reason why Sen. Clinton has so much trouble with the netroots today is that they blame Pres. Clinton for failing to build the Democratic Party and for undercutting the party's major constituencies -- think NAFTA and labor -- when it was politically convenient.

Still, Michael Barone wrote in the Wall Street Journal that there was at least one benefit to this "royalism," as he calls it: "

Only four of the 300 million living Americans has been president and probably only 10 or 12 more ever will be. We need as much knowledge of our presidential candidates as we can get and, if we get some of it by knowing their families as closely as we know the families of recent occupants of the White House, so be it

Squibs: