The gloss may be off the Bush dynasty these days, but this election is full of other legacy candidates. Bloomberg News reports on the multiple Senate candidates whose fathers were big in politics: Republican Thomas Kean Jr. (in photo) in New Jersey and Democrats Bob Casey Jr. in Pennsylvania, Harold Ford Jr. in Tennessee and Jack Carter in Nevada, as well as incumbent Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island.
Five other sitting senators are children of former senators: Democrats Chris Dodd of Connecticut, Evan Bayh of Indiana and Mark Pryor of Arkansas; and Republicans Robert Bennett of Utah and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
The article doesn’t note that Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is the daughter of an Ohio governor.
Beyond the fact of all these family ties is a good question: Is political parentage really a good gauge of fitness to serve in such high political offices?
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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8 Comments
Being daddy’s son doesn’t have anything to do with qualifications. In fact, it probably means they have been groomed for the job: like father, like son.
Personally, I think lineage should be a reason NOT to vote em in. Politics was never meant to be a dynasty.
Holman writes a lot of words to get to a question that answers itself.Was she up against a deadline? What a waste of time.
Ask Peyton Manning.
Let’s ask Nancy Kassebaum if her father, Alf Landon, helped shape her service to the country.
Let’s ask George Bush seniorIF ANY OF HIS KIDS LIVED(at least mentally)
Let’s ask the Kennedys…Prez, AG, Senators, Congressmen….and scandals galore….
A more pressing concern is not the ostensible nepotism occurring here, but instead the fact that those with money control every facet of our government. An oligarchy, some might say. Rich people, on both sides, are basically buying their way into politics. To be honest, I don’t know of any way of remedying this short of public financing of elections.
ddub, examining the Constitution (before amendments), reading the Federalist Papers, etc., leads me to believe that having “rich” people in charge was what the Founding Fathers had in mind. For, in those days, education was the province of the well-to-do; the “common man” couldn’t be trusted, evidenced by the Electoral College for election of the President; and the election of U.S. Senators by the state legislatures. The idea of “citizen-legislators” was promoted; after all, shouldn’t the important business of the nation be left to those with property, etc, who could afford to be away from home a while (but not too long) to tend to the nation’s affairs, then returning home to run their businesses, farms, etc.
As a country, we have come a long way since then; universal education (through high school), a change in the idea of a republican form of government to a “democracy” are two reasons the incursion of the “rich” into politics is viewed with such suspicion.
Point I’m trying to make: those with money have always had the means and ability to be involved in government to the exclusion of the working man and woman. This is nothing new.
I have trouble with public finance of elections to the exclusion of private contributions, on a First Amendment basis (see Buckley v. Valeo ), but I agree with your basic premise that the cost of elections has made it nearly impossible for someone without the right “connections” to be able to run. This results in the political families mentioned in the initial post, being involved generation after generation.