The sun setting on Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid also represents a setback to the dynastic character of American politics. Since the Founding Fathers so ostentatiously renounced monarchy in 1776, dynasties have frequently flourished in the Land of the Free. By the time America’s second president John Adams died in 1826 his son, John Quincy Adams, was occupying the White House.
A family affair: Chelsea, Hillary and Bill Clinton
Presidents Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt were, of course, cousins. Only a relentless campaign of assassination prevented the institutionalisation of the Kennedy dynasty. If Hillary Clinton had won this year, by the end of her first term in 2012 the United States would have been governed by alternating members of the Clinton and Bush dynasties for 24 consecutive years. The illness of Senator Edward Kennedy signals the demise of another American quasi-royal line.
Anomaly is no stranger to the US constitution, which George III might legitimately have denounced, in American terminology, as a “crock”. The egalitarian rhetoric of 1776 was shamelessly bogus, full of rhodomontade such as Patrick Henry’s operatic declamation: “Give me liberty or give me death!” To appreciate the extravagant cynicism of the joke you have to bear in mind he owned 66 slaves.
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