Dynastic Voyage.(The Talk of the Town)(politicians and their families)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 29-OCT-07

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COPYRIGHT 2007 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Shortly after Hillary Rodham Clinton declared her candidacy for President last winter, Roger Cohen, writing in the International Herald Tribune, declared that "a delicate problem confronts her that few people are talking about: almost two decades of dynastic domination of American politics." Well, they're talking about it now. "Forty per cent of Americans have never lived when there wasn't a Bush or a Clinton in the White House," a recent Associated Press story, by Nancy Benac, begins. "Talk of Bush-Clinton fatigue is increasingly cropping up in the national political debate," Benac goes on. "If Hillary Clinton were to be elected and reelected, the nation could go twenty-eight years in a row with the same two families governing the country. Add the elder Bush's terms as Vice-President, and that would be thirty-six years straight with a Bush or Clinton in the White House." And a cover story in the Economist a couple of weeks ago, while noting that a woman President "would undoubtedly be a good thing for the country," adds, ominously, "But there is a downside: dynasty."

Ruling families are...

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