On Dynasties
“I think this is a great American country, great country, and if we can’t find more than two or three to run for high office, that’s silly, because there are great governors, great people who are eligible to run.for high office. And I think that the Kennedys, Clintons, and Bushes, there are just more families than that.”
-- Barbara Bush, the Swine of Babylon
There is a possibility that the November, 2016 presidential election could feature both a Clinton and a Bush as the major party candidates. That raises the questions: would this represent a modern form of dynasty? And if so, is that a healthy feature of a democracy?
A working definition of “dynasty” is when a small number of families controls the political and economic life of a country. From history, we know that China and Europe had dynasties that lasted for centuries. None of these resembled democracies. None were known to include what is known as a “middle class.” There were the ruling elites, merchants, and a majority of people, who were serfs and peasants.
By no coincidence, there was a apparently popular television series, from January 1981 to May of 1989, called “Dynasty.” While I’ve never watched it, I know it was a trashy night-time soap opera, that appealed primarily to those seeking mindless entertainment. That the series would run pretty much in the period of the Reagan-Bush administration might shed light upon this need.
In more recent times, both HBO and Showtime have featured series on various dynasties -- some purely fictional, some with a bit of history mixed in. These series tend to include numerous scenes with quivering flesh and bloody gore, enough to keep viewers loyal to the shows. And they always include serfs, slaves, and peasants, who frequently have complicated love-hate relationships with the beautiful people in elite positions.
I believe that the Reagan-Bush years representing a move away from the USA being a constitutional democracy, and towards becoming a high-tech feudal state. Now, that’s just me. Just my opinion. I’m curious about your opinion:
Does a potential Clinton vs. Bush suggest to you a hint of “dynasty”? Does that concern you? Is it an issue that could ever influence how you vote, either in a primary or general election?
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...although I'm not fond of such restrictions (term limits, et al), but we NEED someone who is NOT an ogliarch to lead the country. Obama was that man, but he seemed to not want to rock the status quo.
WE NEED someone to rock the status quo - NOW more than ever!!! 
and middle classes (by economic definition) started emerging in the 13th c., and the monasteries provided educated nuclei that could browbeat the kings with little fear since, I dunno, St Martin of Tours
now, a closer economic profile might be Latin America from the 1830s to the turn of the century: strict peonage tied to a local don but entirely tied to the global markets: this system was strongest in Colombia and Brazil
rough-ridin' Argentina with its lace-wearing throat-cutting gauchos and de Francia's crazy Paraguay (think "North Korea, but successful"
were the main exception until the 50s; in the 70s El Salvador and Guatemala outright enslaved the Indians for the plantation system--sugar, coffee, cotton, and the system of officer-run garrison-villages would continue until the 1980s
but given that Presidential typically inherent & continue the same allies & rivals & basically continue in the same direction regarding foreign policy or domestic erosion of the 4th amendment, generally speaking.
I think elements of the set direction started to appear & the earliest signs were Espionage Act and J. Edgar Hoover's liberal use of it as key part of it. Kinda took a back seat during WWII than someone like Truman actually became President and overall, believe he had unusual noble intentions. This article highlights best what I mean.
Four months later his committee comes in with a report, 178 pages, beautifully documented. It’s the blueprint; 35 explicit recommendations. He publicly embraces them all. Doesn’t hesitate. Embraces them all. Washington Post headlines call it an explosive revolutionary report and the President just two months from the election year with a Republican Congress embraces them all. The next year he goes to his Congress, January 7th. When you start a presidential campaign year, the State of the Union is your kick-off speech. He says to the Congress, still Republican-controlled Congress, I’ve got five priorities. The no. 1 priority is civil rights reform and by the way, I’m going to tell you members of Congress more about it in the short term. Twenty-five days later, February 2nd, he sends the first ever comprehensive civil rights bill to the U.S. Congress, a proposal--10 points, everything, anti-lynching, voting rights, end of discrimination in interstate commerce, comprehensive civil rights bill. This is an election year. First ever. By the way, this legislation finally gets adopted in the heat of the civil rights upheaval in the ‘60s, but Harry Truman’s there first with the blueprint.
Not surprising, a month later Gallup conducts a poll and this is where it really does become shocking for a politician--82% of those polled by Gallup opposed Harry Truman’s civil rights proposal, 82%. And I have to read you Harry Truman on polls, because it really says it all, [were it] that more politicians felt this way. These are his words, not mine. “I wonder how far Moses would have gone if he had taken a poll in Egypt. What would Jesus Christ have preached if he had taken a poll in Israel. Where would the Reformation have gone if Martin Luther had taken a poll? It isn’t polls or public opinion of the moment that counts. It’s right and wrong and leadership. Men with fortitude, honesty and a belief in right,” and by the way, at that point, obviously House member Lyndon Baines Johnson was taking polls because a month after all this happens he launches his campaign for Senate, his second and ultimately successful campaign and who is public enemy no. 1? Harry Truman’s civil rights proposal. He calls it a sham and a farce. So it was widespread political opposition to Harry Truman. This is an election year. Harry Truman is unflinching. He has no intention of backing down.
At this point, Harry Truman’s popularity is not increasing at all, I can assure you. The Republicans on June 24 hold their convention in Philadelphia. Come up with a dream ticket. The dream ticket for ‘48--Thomas Dewey, Governor of New York; on the other coast of the country, Earl Warren, Governor of California. There was so much concern in the Democratic leadership that Harry Truman could not be elected largely because of civil rights that a number of leading Democrats tried to recruit Dwight Eisenhower to be the nominee for the party. That finally collapsed. It’s only on July 15th a week before the Democrat convention. That convention takes place in Philadelphia like the Republican convention. It’s a free-for-all. Why? Harry Truman’s civil rights proposal. There’s a fight over the plank that is legendary. Harry Truman puts forward a plank that is constitutionally anchored and calls for legislation. The state rights Democrats respond with a regressive proposal and Mayor Hubert Humphrey from Minneapolis comes in with a very explicit plank that tracks Truman’s February 2nd proposal to Congress. It’s a fight that would shatter the party. The more explicit plank prevails by 69 votes.
<snip>
Now, Harry Truman could write some nasty letters when he was irritated. He took a week before he answered this letter and I must tell you, this letter to me was one of the most instructive things I found in my research. I’ll just read an excerpt of a long letter. “Dear Ernie. I’m going to send you a copy of the report on my Commission on Civil Rights and if then you still have that antebellum, pro-slavery outlook, I’ll be thoroughly disappointed in you. The main difficulty with the South is that they are living 80 years behind the time and the sooner they come out of it, the better it will for the country and themselves. When a Mayor and a City Marshall can take a Negro Sergeant off a bus in South Carolina, beat him up, put out one of his eyes and nothing is done about it by the state authorities, something is radically wrong with the system. I cannot approve of such goings on and I shall never approve it as long as I am here. As I told you before, I’m going to try to remedy it and if it ends up in my failure to be reelected, that failure will be in a good cause.”
http://www.virginia.edu/uvanewsmakers/newsmakers/gardner.html
Someone so willing to embrace the right thing at the expense of great risk of their political career is so unlikely to be seen again but right or wrong, I think it is fair to say his heart was in the right place. The NSA & CIA & things that took on a life of their own but while he certainly had an effect in the direction the US or "dark forces" went into during the Cold War. I don't believe, especially regarding the CIA was an unintended consequence. He mentioned difficulties in receiving numerous reports from everybody that didn't communicate with each other so he wanted to streamline all this for reports to the President, hence the name "Central Intelligence".
If I'm not mistaken, I believe he was the last of his kind that lived out his post-Presidential as not a rich man because...
Wiki cites a book page number on his main page
Once out of office, Truman quickly decided that he did not wish to be on any corporate payroll, believing that taking advantage of such financial opportunities would diminish the integrity of the nation's highest office. He also turned down numerous offers for commercial endorsements.
I want to quickly point the help he received from Hubert Humphrey, there are many articles the focus on the Hubert Humphrey perspective alone regarding the 1948 Convention. I'm also an admirer of his entire political career and he is one I view as someone we desperately needed to win that election to at-least alter the course which was fast tracked by Nixon. I even wish he won all those primaries.
Anyways, CIA quickly was up to some shady stuff with the assassination planning & 1953 coup. I'll spare the details on that point meanwhile J. Edgar Hoover has been there the whole time with COINTELPRO & I wish I could have been there for the "peak of liberalism" but it is very tragic loss how the era ended.
Then the recent information regarding how much the Kennedy administration opposed Kennedy. He had the sense to thankfully turn down "Operation Northwoods" (If the CIA proposed that in the 60s, no telling what kind of false flag operations they proposed later), they wanted a full scale "Bay of Pigs". I think he turned down a proposal to nuke Vietnam but I'll have to double check, the DUer with best collection of sources regarding all this mentioned several times he ordered withdrawal of troops in Vietnam not long before he was assassinated. I don't have any certainty regarding how that went down but I'm certainly interested in learning more but the CIA or the "dark forces" in general would rank up there. It is interesting, he was the last one I'm aware post-50s that wanted to significantly reform foreign policy than LBJ goes full scale the other way & the rest history.
LBJ's biographer best describes my impression of him "Johnson's ambition was uncommon—in the degree to which it was unencumbered by even the slightest excess weight of ideology, of philosophy, of principles, of beliefs."
I don't really believe policy was a factor at all regarding the 180 and given his reputation as in expert in political strategy certainly timed taking a hard left turn as VP during the "peak of liberalism" but at-the-end you saw basically the foreign policy & 4th amendment erosion.
Operation CHAOS or Operation MHCHAOS was the code name for a domestic espionage project conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency. A department within the CIA was established in 1967 on orders from President of the United States Lyndon B. Johnson and later expanded under President Richard Nixon. The operation was launched under Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Richard Helms, by chief of counter-intelligence, James Jesus Angleton, and headed by Richard Ober. The program's goal was to unmask possible foreign influences on the student antiwar movement.[1][2] The "MH" designation is to signify the program had a worldwide area of operations.[3]
<snip>
Targets of Operation CHAOS within the antiwar movement included:[5]
Students for a Democratic Society
Black Panther Party
Women Strike for Peace
Ramparts Magazine[7]
Officially, reports were to be compiled on "illegal and subversive" contacts between United States civilian protesters and "foreign elements" which "might range from casual contacts based merely on mutual interest to closely controlled channels for party directives." At its finality, Operation CHAOS contained files on 7,200 Americans, and a computer index totaling 300,000 civilians and approximately 1,000 groups.[8] The initial result of investigations lead DCI Richard Helms to advise then President Johnson on November 15, 1967, that the agency had uncovered "no evidence of any contact between the most prominent peace movement leaders and foreign embassies in the U.S. or abroad." Helms repeated this assessment in 1969.[1] In total 6 reports where compiled for the White House and 34 for cabinet level officials.[2]
Aftermath
In 1973, amid the uproar of the Watergate break-in, involving two former CIA officers, Operation CHAOS was closed.[4] The secret nature of the former program however was exposed in 1974 when Seymour Hersh published an article in the New York Times titled Huge CIA Operation Reported in US Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years.[1][9] The following year, further details were revealed during Representative Bella Abzug's House Subcommittee on Government Information and individual Rights.[3] The government, in response to the revelations, launched the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States (The Rockefeller Commission), led by then Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, to investigate the depth of the surveillance.[1] "Dick" Richard Cheney, then Deputy White House Chief of Staff, is noted as stating of the Rockefeller Commission; it was to avoid " ... congressional efforts to further encroach on the executive branch."[1]
Following the revelations by the Rockefeller Commission, then-DCI George H. W. Bush admitted that "the operation in practice resulted in some improper accumulation of material on legitimate domestic activities."[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_CHAOS
I need to learn more regarding Jimmy Carter but I don't know it was if he was indirectly sabotaged by events that transpired before he got there all exploded by-the-time he got there. I do note the Hostage had a remarkably easy set of hostage demands but he achieved the same desirable result in the end. The oil embargo which he said a lot of stuff that we really need to start doing, he even predicted to the "Shale gas boom" by pointing to the known reserves as a way to achieve energy independence but most of it is exported but Canada moved into 1st place and it isn't close as our top importer but greed hasn't stopped to oil & gas industry before. I view oil as the root of all evil because it really is, money leads to similar things but that black stuff is controlling all this. I don't even consider it as speculative, just a fact.
To tie the foreign & domestic together, it does appear populism is viewed as a top threat. US gets along great with far right heads of state if they keep the privatization machine going but given the targets of COINTELPRO & all the renamed domestic spying that went on, the populists here at home were viewed as the threat to their goals. I always look at the "peak of liberalism" as what could have been.
Anyways, this is just my opinion and don't consider it really like my recent rambling off-track posts, all this is stuff I originally intended to mention. 
Regarding Clinton vs Bush, I view the "dark forces" as the dynasty or far more troubling that family members routinely achieving political power.
Another minor one that comes to mind is that little twerp Rand Paul, who is in the US Senate merely because of his father. And there are,as you note, many other examples that show that our government has a ruling elite. Hardly shocking, I know.
At risk of repeating a point I believe is important, to the point of boring others, we might start at the very beginning of our nation's attempt to identify itself. It started as a republic, based upon the ideas we can identify as Hamiltonian. The word "republic" comes from the root "res publica," or "a public thing," meaning that the public good would be administered through the leadership of the elite class (rather than a king).
In approximately 1804, the nation became a democracy -- "demos krateo," meaning "rule of the people." It is the Jeffersonian school of thought, which attempts to give the common man a voice in government.
From this very basic understanding, we can determine which of the two schools of thought -- republican or democratic -- provides the fertile ground for dynasty. And, as you note, it is not limited to "ownership" of the White House; it is access to the economic-political control of the nation-state.
I think it is fair to say that almost all of those in the three major groups -- the pro-Clinton, the anti-Clinton, and the undecided/ not firmly decided -- recognize the unhealthy influence that "money" has on politics today. Indeed, most here appreciate President Eisenhower's famous farewell warning about the military-industrial complex. (In a recent OP, I documented how, in most of the rough drafts of that speech, Ike wrote about the "Congressional-military-industrial complex."
By its very nature, dynasties benefit a specific group. There are very, very few examples of dynasties benefiting the common man (FDR's programs being the most obvious). As a rule, it is the elite, or the 1% that capitalize on American dynasties.
As you note, it is a dynamic that raises its head (publicly) every so often. It is up to every generation to become aware of what it means, and -- unless there is another FDR -- to prevent it from taking deeper root.
