What if I were to tell you that the Democratic nomination of Barack Obama saved the American Republic and modern democracy as we know it today? Does that sound a little too far fetched? Maybe, unless you consider the fact that a Hillary Clinton presidency would have meant that the United States of America would have been ruled for twenty-eight years by only two families! Consider the facts.
We start with George Bush the Elder who served from 1989 to 1993,a single four year term. He was followed by Bill Clinton, who served two terms from 1993 to 2001. Clinton was followed by Bush the Elder's son, G.W. Bush, who like Clinton before him was elected to two terms and will finish in January of 2009. Now comes the fun part. If Hillary Clinton had been nominated by the Democratic P arty instead of Obama and if she had won and served two terms as most presidents do, then we would have had the unique situation of the last four presidential terms being served by only two families.
Nor is this scenario only on the Democratic side. In 2005, shortly after George Bush began his second term, there were some Republicans who were seriously contemplating running the President's brother, Jeb Bush for the Presidency in 2008. Had that happened and Jeb Bush won then we could have had the possibility of three of the last four Presidents belonging to one single family!
None of this happened of course, but it very easily could have. These are not far fetched and ridiculously unlikely scenarios I'm discussing. The Democratic nomination was a hard fought battle and Hillary Clinton nearly won it. Jeb Bush is a highly respected politician and could very well have run for the Presidency had it not been for the strongly negative stigma currently attached to the Bush name.
The point I am trying to make here is that we as Americans are becoming lazy in our obligations as voters and are not only simply voting for the same old party, but are apparently voting for the same old families. We are becoming less of a democracy and more of an aristocracy, with a select few families running the country.
Political dynasties are of course nothing new. George Bush is hardly the first son of a President to become President. That honor goes to John Quincy Adams, the son of John Adams. William Henry Harrison was the grandson of Benjamin Harrison. Franklin Roosevelt was the cousin (albeit by marriage) of Teddy Roosevelt.
In our own time we have the Kennedy family and the Rockefellers, both spawning seemingly endless numbers of politicians. But is this a good thing? Is the country really best served by having our political servants coming from a smaller and smaller gene pool? Somehow I seriously doubt it.
None of this, of course, is to say these people do not have the right to run for office. As American citizens they of course do. I am not even saying that they could not serve adequately in office if chosen, in all likely hood most of them could. But do we really want to have the country by fewer and fewer people?
This is why I am encouraged by the candidacy of Barack Obama.I mean, really, the son of an immigrant goat herder from Kenya rising to become President of the most powerful nation on Earth. What could be more American?
