Election 2008: No More Clinton or Bushs

I was just going to add this to the links of the day, when I saw a few things I wanted to highlight here from Paris Lemon

The Los Angeles Times had a very interesting op-ed piece today which points out something that seems to be almost completely overlooked; say Hillary Clinton is elected President in 2008 and again in 2012, by the times she leaves office in 2017 that would have been 28 straight years of someone named either Bush or Clinton in the White House! This is even worse if you consider the 8 years George H.W. Bush served as Ronald Reagan's Vice President...that would be 36 years!

As the article points out, when George Washington turned down a 3rd term as President and later Thomas Jefferson warned of an "unnatural aristocracy" they would likely not be happy with this potential situation. Though America is not supposed to have an oligarchy (that is where the power of the government rests with only a small, elite segment of society) that seems to be what is evolving. What are the odds that both the son of George H.W. Bush and the wife of Bill Clinton would be the best people out of 200 million + citizens to run the country at the times they were elected? Not very good....

To take it a step further, it would seem that the people of this country despite the strength of that name recognition don't even want relatives of former Presidents in office. The LA Times lays this out perfectly:

"Three times in American history have close relatives of former presidents won the office. John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams, lost the popular vote to Andrew Jackson in 1824 but won in the electoral college amid charges of a "corrupt bargain." Benjamin Harrison, grandson of William Henry Harrison, lost the popular vote to Grover Cleveland in 1888 and also suffered as a "minority president" and mere figurehead. George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore in 2000."

In the 3 times where a relative of a former President has been elected, the person elected actually lost the popular vote all three times ! That is perhaps another argument for why we should get rid of or at least drastically alter the electoral college, but that is another topic.

I will be posting why I don't think Hillary has a snow ball's chance in hell of winning the presidency in 2008, but that will be another post.