[Skybird]

"Dynasty" is back!

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...532247,00.html
(reprint from the NYT)

If Hillary Rodham Clinton serves two terms, then for 28 years the presidency will have been held by a Bush or a Clinton. By that point, about 40 percent of Americans would have lived their entire lives under a president from one of these two families. (...)
We Americans snicker patronizingly as "democratic" Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Singapore, India and Argentina hand over power to a wife or child of a former leader. Yet I can't find any example of even the most rinky-dink "democracy" confining power continuously for seven terms over 28 years to four people from two families. (And that's not counting George H.W. Bush's eight years as vice president.) (...)
The counterargument goes like this: As voters, we should always choose the best person for the job. We should evaluate candidates on their own merits and not drag in their families. We punish ourselves if we spurn the best person because of his or her family background.
Yet we have faced this trade-off frequently over the last 215 years and regularly inclined on the side of fresh blood. In 1796, George Washington's skill and popular mandate seemed invaluable at a perilous time in our nation's infancy. Yet we overwhelmingly believe that it was good for American democracy that he stepped down after two terms.
As Thomas Jefferson put it: "in no office can rotation be more expedient" than in the presidency.