American Dynasties
There are certain families that have done everything they can to place themselves at the center of American life. It almost seems that they can’t help themselves. In the early days of the Republic, the gold-standard name was Washington and yet our first president and father of our country did everything to distance himself from being viewed as a king. He voluntarily left office after two terms and never did anything to try to create a dynasty. Consequently, it seems that every city in America has some street or building bearing the Washington name, as though the country wanted to honor the very fact that Washington taught us that America is a country that eschews dynasties. Unfortunately, the electoral process in the country went through its own growing pains as we sorted out how we should best select our leaders when there were not seminal war heroes like Washington available for the obvious choice. Eventually, the nation decided on another Founding Father by the name of John Adams as its second president, who served only one four-year term. That choice was followed by a seeming tradition of selecting other Founding Fathers, namely Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe, all of whom served two four year terms. When they ran out of surviving Founding Fathers in 1824 and there were no more obvious known entities available for election, they struggled with the unseemly and unorthodox efforts of renegade Andrew Jackson to assume the role, that they reached back and created the first American dynasty by electing John Quincy Adams, the son of the second president for a four year term. This was despite the fact that Jackson had garnered more electoral college votes, but none of them had gotten a majority. It was the House of Representatives that decided that an Adams in the White House was less threatening than a renegade. The country was apparently less than pleased with that decision, so in 1928 they overwhelmingly voted for Jackson over Adams, proving that dynasties are not so acceptable to Americans.
The next American dynasty did not appear for over a hundred years. In 1901, after the assassination of William McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt became the 26th president and served for the bulk of two terms. He chose not to run again, but rather to cede way to William Howard Taft, only to regret the decision and attempt to unsuccessfully reenter the presidency four years later. Then, in 1932, with the country reeling from the early stages of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt became the 32nd president. He was only a fifth cousin of Teddy’s, sharing a great-great-great-grandfather from the seventeenth century, but the unique name Roosevelt surely felt familiar and familial to Americans. Perhaps it was the Depression or perhaps it was WWII, but FDR went on to do what no prior president had ever done, which was run and get elected four times. That was enough to cause the nation to install the 22nd Amendment to formalize the theretofore normalized standard of presidents serving no more than two terms. Americans yet again showed their disdain for dynasties…even distant ones.
In the 1930’s, while FDR was building his reign, no one was more powerful within the governing Democratic Party than Joseph P. Kennedy, a patrician Bostonian who had become a wealthy contrarian investor during the Depression. He took on various roles in government including being the Ambassador to England during the early days of WWII. He had a vision of guiding his many sons into political power. His oldest, Joe Jr. died a war hero, but his second son, Jack rose through the ranks of Massachusetts Congressman to Massachusetts Senator until being elected President in 1960. His ascension was the result of an intentional move by father Joe to create a Kennedy dynasty. JFK took the unusual nepotistic move of anointing his younger brother Bobby as Attorney General. This caused the imposition of the Federal Anti-Nepotism statute in 1967, but Robert F. Kennedy was already on his way to a Democratic nomination for President when he was assassinated in 1968. America does not like dynasties.
Even the youngest Kennedy, Teddy, who served 47 years in the U.S. Senate, knew that America disliked dynasties, even though they seemed to love flirting with them. He was continuously wooed to run from president but invoked the famous expression of William Tecumseh Sherman, who famously said, “If nominated I will not run and if elected I will not serve.”
We have since had a Bush dynasty, which seems to have played itself out after a one-term run by George H.W. and two-terms (the first by the skin of his teeth and a push by SCOTUS) for George W. The Clintons tried the unique dynastic play of having a wife, Hillary, succeed her husband Bill in the presidency. Hillary was certainly accomplished in her own right, having served in the Senate from New York and as Barack Obama’s powerful Secretary of State, but despite winning the popular vote, she was defeated in the electoral college by Donald Trump. Many believe that Trump holds dynastic ambitions. He put his daughter Ivanka and her husband Jarrod into influential advisory roles in the White House (apparently that Anti-Nepotism statute did not go far enough) and there has been consistent talk of Don Jr. in future electoral roles, but that looks more and more ill-fated as the prospects of a Trump second term fade into obscurity.
Meanwhile, the Kennedy American political dynasty has tried to rear its ugly head again in the form of infamous anti-vaxer RFK Jr. running around trying to gin up a third-party candidacy. Today, RFK Jr. will be formally dropping out of the presidential race, having lost most of his raison d’etre by virtue of Biden’s stepping down. But he is intent on flexing his dynastic muscles one last time and is suspected of intending to throw his endorsement, and presumably some votes, towards Donald Trump. It is said that he sought a meeting with Kamala Harris to negotiate for a cabinet position from her in exchange for an endorsement, but she would not take the meeting (Good for her!). Apparently, American political dynasties are like dynastic wealth, they run thin after a few generations. Nature does not seem to like the dynastic approach to life. Nature is designed to want everyone to make their own way to greatness, and, after all, isn’t that the American way?