The Clinton dynasty will not go gentle into that good night. For the machine to work—for the Foundation to look attractive to donors, for the apparatchiks to have paychecks, for the patronage networks to remain strong—there has to be a Clinton in the political arena. An heir must step up to the plate. And the House of Clinton is already making its first post-election moves. The Hill reports:
The seeds are being planted for Chelsea Clinton to run for Congress representing New York, according to a new report.
Clinton would seek the House seat occupied by Rep. Nina Lowey (D-N.Y.) once the lawmaker decides to retire, The New York Post said Thursday. …
So Chelsea is now getting ready to launch a political career. She won’t just have the formidable talents and world-famous examples of her parents to help her; many of the family loyalists and hangers-on who have been staffing Team Clinton since the early 1990s will also want—even need—for her to succeed.
The founders (with, one presumes, the partial exception of the Adamses) were horrified by the prospect of dynastic politics. Historically, the rise of powerful families in republics has been associated with growing corruption and the decay of republican institutions. The petty tyrants who crushed the liberties of the Italian city-states, the demagogues who wrecked the Roman Republic, the Caesars: The American founders feared that our liberties would one day be destroyed by powerful and aristocratic men of ambition who would whip the poor into a frenzy of resentment against the elites, and then establish a dictatorship on the basis of economic and political populism.
The fact that Donald Trump was able to upend both the Bush and the Clinton machines in 2016 suggests that the powerful anti-dynastic tide that has marked U.S. politics at least since we booted out George III is still with us. Chelsea Clinton, along with any young Bushes and Kennedys who have political ambitions, is going to have to face the skepticism of a generation that dislikes privilege and elites. Yet the House of Trump itself may harbor dynastic ambitions, and it too will face a high bar of public distrust.
