The Threat of Dynasties in American Politics
What would the framers say about the Bush/Clinton showdown?
“We’ve had enough Bushes in the White House.”[i]
Former First Lady Barbara Bush made headlines last year while making an appearance on The Today Show to promote the opening of her son’s presidential library when she was asked whether she wanted her youngest son, Jeb Bush, to run for president in 2016. Mrs. Bush, ever the picture of candor, spoke plainly. (Remember this is the woman who suggested that it would be best if Sarah Palin “stayed in Alaska.”[ii]) Mrs. Bush told Matt Lauer, “He’s by far the best-qualified man, but no. I really don’t. I think it’s a great country, there are a lot of great families, and it’s not just four families or whatever. There are other people out there that are very qualified, and we’ve had enough Bushes.”[iii] Mrs. Bush’s comments speak not only to a disappointingly dismal time in American politics in which we could potentially have a Bush as our 41st, 43rd, and 45th president, but also to a deeply rooted national concern over political dynasties that traces back to the founding of the Constitution.
The problem with a Jeb Bush presidency, as his mother fondly clarified, is not that he isn’t qualified. In fact, he meets all of the Article II pre-requisites for a president. He is a “natural born Citizen”[iv] from Midland, Texas, has been “fourteen years a resident within the United States,”[v] and, at sixty-one, is well above the minimum age of thirty-five years. A surface-level analysis of the Constitution puts Jeb squarely on his way to inauguration day. However, to read the Constitution so superficially would be a mistake, and miss the framer’s true intentions behind the Article II restrictions — particularly the age restraint. Through Article II, the framers attempted to further the democratic spirit of the document, and consequently, the country.
Seemingly an arbitrary exclusion, Article II’s eligibility requirement states that “[no] person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years.”[vi] However, as Professor Akhil Amar reminds us in his book America’s Constitution: A Biography, it is far more telling to consider a situation in which someone younger than thirty-five would be elected president than to simply read the age requirement as written.[vii] At the time of the framing, Amar asserts, it is likely that only a man born with a silver spoon in his mouth could assemble enough support and recognition to make a viable run for president before he was thirty-five.[viii] In other words: the nobility would prevail. The prospect of a country in which the sons of aristocracy decided the fate of the many sounded eerily familiar to the founders, and so they created the presidential age requirement to safeguard against the new presidential position becoming like another English kingship.
Beyond the written age requirement, the political landscape at the time of America’s founding further revealed a concern over dynasties. As Amar points out, one of the many reasons why Washington was such an attractive first president is that he did not have any sons. “He sired no heirs, and his only stepson died in 1781.”[ix] Any fears of the country’s first president creating a dynasty were quelled. Washington himself acknowledged how important this trait was to his presidency, even mentioning it in his first Inaugural Address, saying he had “no family to build in greatness upon [his] Country’s ruin.”[x] Moreover, in the next election between Jefferson and Adams, the public applauded Jefferson’s lack of a male heir but condemned Adams’ privilege and sons. A Boston newspaper that reported that, “Adams has Sons who might aim to succeed their father. Jefferson, like Washington, has no Son.”[xi] The first partisan presidential election ushered in a concern over dynastic politics in America that remains prevalent.
When asked about the dynastic nature of a potential presidential run of her own, Hilary Clinton cited a history of family politics in this country. “We had two Roosevelts. We had two Adams. It may be that certain families just have a sense of commitment or even a predisposition to want to be in politics.”[xii] Former Secretary Clinton continued her argument, even recalling her failed presidential run in 2008, “My last name did not help me in the end. Our system is open to everyone. It is not a monarchy in which I wake up in the morning and abdicate in favor of my son.”[xiii] However, with an ever more probable chance of President Clinton: the sequel (or even President Bush: the three-quel), the hesitation with regard to political dynasties is fair. What would the founders think of the political landscape as it stands now? Are dynasties an antiquated constitutional concern? Or do we still fear that the power in this country will be passed within a family, only representing a small portion of the population?
Perhaps the best way to answer that question is that it is a little of both. Mrs. Clinton mentions our second president, John Adams, as an example for why she is not troubled by a few families dominating the American political arena. Adams’ son, John Quincy Adams was our sixth president, elected less than half a century after the ratification of the Constitution. Apparently, the concern over dynasties did not last long. Yet, a closer inspection of Quincy Adams’ record demonstrates a qualified, well-educated statesman, rather than the pompous son of privilege. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University, practiced law in Massachusetts, was elected to the US Senate, and served as Secretary of State during the creation of the Monroe Doctrine and the annexation of Florida.[xiv] Even after he was elected president, he was not guaranteed an uninhibited rule as the son of a former president. He lost his re-election bid to Andrew Jackson in 1828. Certainly, this was not the making of a dynasty. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, too, was the second of his name to be president. But where the Adams men served a single term as president respectively, FDR served nearly four. On the other hand, though, FDR was the fourth cousin once removed of Theodore Roosevelt. There was no father to son bequeathing of the presidency, rather a qualified president that fashioned the New Deal and the Manhattan Project.
In a slightly different vein, the Kennedy family has long been a prominent part of the American political landscape. While only one Kennedy has occupied the oval office, the family has produced several senators, congressmen, and other diplomats. In fact, a sixty-four year period in which a Kennedy was either in the White House, Congress, or Senate just ended in 2013.[xv] Many call the Kennedys the closest thing to American royalty that exists, and yet there has only ever been one President Kennedy to date. This climate of family politics, while certainly present, was nothing like the land of kings and nobles that the framers wanted to avoid.
Mrs. Clinton rightly pointed out that the presence of families in politics is a part of the country’s history, and has not inhibited the democratic nature of our highest office. So why the concern over dynasties now? The answer lies in the presupposition that the founders’ concerns were not simply for a single family controlling the presidency, but rather reflective of a fear that the nobility, the one-percent in today’s terms, would control the country. Bill and Hillary Clinton were not fabulously wealthy growing up. They both worked hard, attended Yale Law School, and committed themselves to serving the country in politics. They are a single couple in a single generation — hardly a dynasty in the framers’ terms.
Conversely, the Bush family is multigenerational. When President George W. Bush left office in 2009 there had been a Bush in either the Presidency or Vice-Presidency for all but 8 of the preceding 28 years.[xvi] The first President Bush was born wealthy, and his sons are the direct beneficiates of their father’s success, but perhaps without some of his intellectual talents. (An old teacher of W’s at Andover once told me he was “as nice as could be, but dumb as a doornail.”)[xvii] Privilege, money, and power flowed through various generations, and there is no sign of deceleration. Speculators have reported that George P. Bush, Jeb Bush’s good-looking son, has been tapped by the family to make a run in the next decade.[xviii] A third generation of Bushes in the White House? The makings of a dynasty are surely at work. In this case, the founders would have praised Barbara Bush’s advice that Jeb show some restraint.
The problem with political dynasties, then, is not that members of the same family can become president. Rather, it is that sons of privilege have an advantage over those without. In the wake of the Citizens United decision, which removed campaign finance limits for corporations and workers unions, presidential elections can cost $2 billion.[xix] Money is everything. This environment is where a dynasty, or a descendent of political and economic power like Mitt Romney, can be dangerous. They have the means to become relevant, access to the sort of contributors that will fund super-PACs to keep a campaign afloat. This is a modern version of what the founders feared when they put in the presidential age requirement in Article II. In 1776, they could not have foreseen the billions of dollars that the Romney and Obama campaigns would spend in 2012, but this imperative to have money in order to run for president would have worried them. The Bushes are not kings. And a third President Bush would not transform the country into a mid-eighteenth century England. But the dominance of the privileged over the political arena is cause for pause, and perhaps worth re-assessing how much our presidents have to pay to be elected.
The founders enacted an age requirement to allow for a man who had proven his intelligence, his commitment to his country, and his leadership abilities to rise to this country’s highest office. While not everyone should be president, the framers wrote a document with the help of a few amendments that ensured that almost anyone could. When an environment exists in which we elect members of the same families and socio-economic class, we sacrifice the clear benefits of the unknown candidate — the benefits of electing a president that represents the best of “the people,” as the founders intended, rather than the best of “those people,” as dynastic politics implies. The burden of the increasing cost of running for president can only be borne by someone with an enormous amount of political and economic capital, dramatically decreasing the pool of worthy candidates.[xx] The dynasties emerge, the privileged reign supreme, and the country is worse off for it. As Barbara Bush put it, “there are not just four families” that can produce a great president. The framers were wary of dynasties, as should we be.
[i] Eun Kyung Kim, “Barbara Bush on Jeb run,” TODAY, http://www.today.com/news/barbara-bush-jeb-run-weve-had-enough-bushes-white-house-6C9602466 (April 25, 2013).
[ii] Larry King. “Interview with George H.W. and Barbara Bush.” CNN, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1011/22/lkl.01.html (November 22, 2010).
[iii] Kim, “Barbara Bush on Jeb run: ‘We’ve had enough Bushes’ in White House.”
[iv] U.S. Constitution, art. 3, sec. 1.
[v] U.S. Constitution, art. 3, sec. 1.
[vi] U.S. Constitution, art. 2, sec. 1.
[vii] Akhil Amar, America’s Constitution: a Biography, (New York: Random House, 2005), 160.
[viii] Amar, America’s Constitution, 160.
[ix] Amar, America’s Constitution, 161.
[x] George Washington, “Transcription: Washington’s Inaugural Address,” National Archives and Records Administration.
[xi] Amar, America’s Constitution, 162.
[xii] Jonathan Topaz, “Hillary Clinton on dynasties: We had 2 Roosevelts,” POLITICO, http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/hillary-clinton-political-dynasty-der-spiegel-interview-108652.html#ixzz38PnDDre9 (July 7, 2014).
[xiii] Topaz, “Hillary Clinton on dynasties: We had 2 Roosevelts.”
[xiv] Biographical Directory of the US Congress, “John Quincy Adams — Biographical Information.” http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=A000041 (July 25, 2014).
[xv] Michael Levenson, “Pondering a Congress Without Kennedys.” Boston.com, http://www.boston.com/news/local/rhode_island/articles/2010/02/13/pondering_a_congress_without_kennedys/ (February 10,, 2013).
[xvi] Joseph Curl, “Rise of ‘dynasty’ quick, far-reaching,” The Washington Times, January 20, 2005, http://archive.today/mAc0Z (July 25, 2014).
[xvii] John Lyons, Personal Interview by author, Groton School, 2011.
[xviii] Joseph, “Rise of ‘dynasty’ quick, far-reaching.”
[xix] J.F. Atlanta, “Why American elections cost so much,” The Economist, http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/02/economist-explains-4 (July 25, 2014).
[xx] Michael D. Shear, “How Much Does It Cost to Run for President?,” The New York Times, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/how-much-does-it-cost-to-run-for-president/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 (July 25, 2014).
