Dad, Can I Borrow the Scepter?

By Michael Kinsley

And Kathleen was supposed to be the Kennedy for folks who don't even like Kennedys! Earnest and unglamorous, smart and hardworking, with a blameless private life, she doled out the family charm in responsible, measured amounts. She married young and even took her husband's last name, which is an antipatriarchal thing to do if your own last name is Kennedy.

But on Tuesday the voters of Maryland, a heavily Democratic state, rejected Kennedy Lite in favor of no Kennedy at all. Various Kennedy siblings and cousins have also seen their political ambitions go pffft. "The dream shall never die," Uncle Ted declared as he withdrew his presidential bid in 1980. Well, in 2002 the dream is dead. Being a Kennedy in American politics is now officially no big deal.

Yet even as our most legendary political dynasty withers away, American democracy is becoming oddly more dynastic, not less so. Watching the election returns on Tuesday evening, you couldn't help being struck by all the famous political surnames attached to different, usually younger faces. Our President is the son of a former President. The President's brother was re-elected Governor of Florida on Tuesday and is, at least for the moment, more likely to become President one day than anyone else on the planet.

First, look at the Governors. Mitt Romney--son of a Governor of Michigan and onetime candidate for President, George Romney--was elected Governor of Massachusetts. Bob Taft, of a political dynasty that predates even the Kennedys, was re-elected Governor of Ohio.

New U.S. Senators next year will include Mark Pryor of Arkansas, whose father David held the same seat for 18 years, and John Sununu of New Hampshire, son and namesake of the former Governor and White House chief of staff for Bush I. Also Liddy Dole of North Carolina, wife of the former Senate majority leader and presidential candidate. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, whose father was mayor of New Orleans and a member of Jimmy Carter's Cabinet, is favored in a runoff. In the Senate they'll all join Evan Bayh of Indiana and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, both sons of Senators, and Hillary Clinton, who seems intent on starting her own dynasty.

In the House, among other examples, Harold Ford Sr. begot Harold Ford Jr., Mo Udall begot Mark Udall, and Mo's brother Stewart, Interior Secretary under J.F.K., begot Tom Udall.

It's odd that we make so much fuss about the influence of money in politics and so little about an even older form of privilege: blood--or marriage. Two years ago, Jon Corzine of New Jersey spent $60 million of his own money to win a Senate seat. Others have tried to do it on $40 million or less and failed. Clearly, if your goal is to be a Senator, being the son of a Senator is equivalent to having something like $50 million. Like money, blood may not be enough to guarantee victory, but it's better than money in improving your odds. And it's got an edge on money in that it never gets spent; it's a form of political capital that can be drawn on again and again.

Corzine at least earned his money himself, as did most of the other political gazillionaires. By contrast, a political name is inherited wealth of the most plutocratic sort. A childhood or marriage steeped in politics is good training and brings useful connections. But mainly, an established name is the political equivalent of a commercial brand.

"Brand extension," as it is called, means using the reputation of an established product to help peddle a new one. There is a certain logic to the notion that if Kleeneze is a good laundry detergent, then a dishwasher detergent named Kleeneze will be good too. But the power of brand extension operates more on a subrational level of sheer name recognition. The notion that Jones Jr. will make a good Senator because Jones Sr. did is less a rational assumption than a primitive instinct.

Even more than money, political inheritance mocks our pretenses to equal opportunity. Anyone can grow up to be President, but anyone named Bush (or Gore, for that matter) has a much better chance. Political inheritance mocks the populist, anti-Washington pretenses that voters and pols overwhelmingly share. Someday there will be families whose motto could be "Three generations of voting for term limits."

Families with a tradition of public service (to put it grandly), including the Kennedys, have produced some fine individual political leaders. But if the Kennedy backlash turns into a general suspicion of political dynasties, that would be no bad thing.