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Wednesday, December 3, 2008 12:00 AM

Nepotistic succession in the political class

A large, and rapidly growing, percentage of high elected officials are part of politically powerful families. What accounts for this anti-democratic dynamic?

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  • Wednesday, December 3, 2008 06:58 AM

    It's not quite so new

    Leaving aside the Adamses, Harrisons, and Roosevelts, consider a single woman--still alive at this writing--Bethine Clark Church. Her husband, father, uncle, and cousin were all at one time or another Governor of or Senator from Idaho, and if her older son hadn't decided to finish his seminary studies (as he tells in his recent memoir) he might have been a Congressman from Nebraska. Gore Vidal says somewhere that before he was injudicious enough to publish The City and the Pillar, the wires were being pulled for him to follow his grandfather into Congress.

    Still, I admit that one thing that persuaded me to support Obama was the grim notion of an unbroken 24 or 28 year period when the names of the President were Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton. That's no way to run a republic.

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