Modern American Political Dynasties: A Study of Power, Family, and Political Influence

385 Pages·2018·10.416 MB·English

by  Kathleen Gronnerud (editor), Scott J. Spitzer (editor)

Modern American Po liti cal Dynasties
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Modern American Po liti cal Dynasties
A Study of Power, F amily,
and Po liti cal Influence
Kathleen A. Gronnerud and Scott J. Spitzer, Editors
Copyright © 2018 by ABC- CLIO, LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or other wise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a
review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Gronnerud, Kathleen A., editor. | Spitzer, Scott J., editor.
Title: Modern American political dynasties : a study of power, family, and
political influence / Kathleen A. Gronnerud and Scott J. Spitzer, editors.
Description: Santa Barbara, California : Praeger, an imprint of ABC-CLIO,
LLC, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018023119 (print) | LCCN 2018031200 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781440854439 (ebook) | ISBN 9781440854422 (hard copy)
Subjects: LCSH: Politicians—Family relationships—United States. |
Politicians—United States—Biography. | United States—Politics and
government—20th century. | United States—Politics and government—
21st century.
Classification: LCC E74 (ebook) | LCC E74 .M64 2018 (print) |
DDC 324.2092/2 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018023119
ISBN: 978-1-4408-5442-2 (print)
978-1-4408-5443-9 (ebook)
22 21 20 19 18 1 2 3 4 5
This book is also available as an eBook.
Praeger
An Imprint of ABC- CLIO, LLC
ABC-C LIO, LLC
130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911
Santa Barbara, California 93116 - 1911
www. a bc- c lio. c om
This book is printed on acid- free paper
Manufactured in the United States of Amer i ca
Contents
Introduction vii
Scott J. Spitzer
Part One National Po liti cal Dynasties 1
Chapter 1 The Bush Dynasty 3
William Cunion
Chapter 2 The Cabot Lodge Dynasty 25
Kathleen A. Gronnerud
Chapter 3 The Clinton Dynasty 39
Margaret E. Scranton
Chapter 4 The Gore Dynasty 67
Michael R. Fitzgerald
Chapter 5 The Kennedy Dynasty 79
Barbara A. Perry
Chapter 6 The Paul Dynasty 109
Joel F. Turner and Scott Lasley
Chapter 7 The Rocke fel ler Dynasty 119
Richard Skinner
Chapter 8 The Romney Dynasty 151
Dean J. Kotlowski
Chapter 9 The Roo se velt Dynasty 163
Jennifer Hopper
Chapter 10 The Taft Dynasty 189
Mindy Farmer
vi Contents
Part Two State Po liti cal Dynasties 209
Chapter 11 The Brown Dynasty 211
Ethan Rarick
Chapter 12 The Byrd Dynasty 231
Ted Ritter
Chapter 13 The Cuomo Dynasty 245
Saladin Ambar
Chapter 14 The La Follette Dynasty 259
Nancy C. Unger
Chapter 15 The Roberts Dynasty 275
Richard A. Clucas and Skyler Brocker- Knapp
Chapter 16 The Simpson Dynasty 287
Cody J. Foster
Part Three Regional and Metropolitan Po liti cal Dynasties 295
Chapter 17 The Daley Dynasty 297
Larry Bennett
Chapter 18 The Dingell Dynasty 317
Julio L. Borquez
Chapter 19 The Udall Dynasty 329
Zachary A. Smith and Molly E. Thrash
Conclusion: American Democracy and Hereditary Power
in the 21st  Century 343
Scott J. Spitzer
About the Editors and Contributors 355
Index 359
Introduction
Scott J. Spitzer
This study of modern American po liti cal dynasties reveals much about Amer-
ican po liti cal history. In these pages, we find that the historical arc of each
po liti cal f amily— its emergence, rise, and its fading from public life— embraces
centrally impor tant features in the development of 20th- century American
politics. T hese include: the power of the party po liti cal machines and their
subsequent disruption by reforms in the early part of the c entury; the remark-
ably successful confrontation of racial hierarchy in the South by the nonvio-
lent civil rights movement; the rise of the conservative movement in the
second half of the century and its transformation of the modern Republican
Party; and the modern Demo cratic Party’s strug gles to redefine its agenda, as
the New Deal coalition confronted a new set of political challenges, quite dif-
ferent from its original agenda in addressing the economic deprivation of the
Great Depression. Yet even as tracing their individual stories reveal much about
the nation’s po liti cal character, the very existence of these po liti cal dynasties chal-
lenges basic demo cratic assumptions underl ying the American experiment.
The American Revolution and the Constitution
There is an unspoken tension in American demo cratic politics, between
an emphasis on the power of everyday citizens and an appreciation of exper-
tise and professionalism in our elected leaders. Although Americans claim
nearly universal support for the demo cratic princi ple of popu lar sovereignty
(the citizens’ right to choose their leaders), the nation’s po liti cal history illus-
trates the long- standing practice of established leadership expertise. T hese two
are not necessarily opposed to one another— a nation can certainly have demo-
cratically elected leaders who enjoy strong support among the public and
who are also refined in their po liti cal skills, possessing specialized expertise
in one or more areas of relevant policy. But noteworthy tensions exist in
viii Introduction
American politics between those who favor an unfettered democracy and
those concerned with stable and experienced leadership. The American Rev-
olution surely was animated by a commitment to the establishment of a robust
democracy, epitomized in Jefferson’s immortal Declaration of In de pen dence:
“We hold these truths to be self- evident that all men are created equal”.1 At
the same time, the U.S. Constitution, drafted a de cade later, reflects the con-
cerns of its original framers with the destabilizing and potentially destructive
power of impassioned populist movements.2 Indeed, the difficulties that the
young nation had in suppressing Shays’ Rebellion, just a year before the Phila-
delphia Constitutional Convention of 1787, was evidence enough for the con-
vention delegates that pop u lism and democracy were potentially dangerous
to the nation’s very survival. The resulting Constitution therefore reflected
both the desire for direct demo cratic empowerment of the public, through the
elected House of Representatives, and a desire that during the debates over
the Constitution the national government be directed by those with a large
stake in the nation’s success: elites with something to lose if the nation w ere to
somehow fail to thrive. The latter was reflected in a Senate that would be
selected by state legislatures, rather than directly elected; in the lifetime
appointed terms of the federal judiciary; and in the peculiar arrangement
for selecting the president, by unelected electors in each state, themselves
selected by their respective state legislatures.
At the same time, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention shared
with their Revolutionary brethren a fundamental commitment to popu lar sov-
ereignty. The nation’s leaders would be chosen in such a way that they would
be ultimately accountable to the public, and the hereditary privilege of Eu ro-
pean monarchies and the upper h ouses of Eu ro pean parliaments w ere to be
completely abolished. The Electoral College would be chosen by the elected
state legislatures; U.S. senators selected by the same; and the members of the
Supreme Court selected by the president and confirmed by the Senate, each of
whom w ere to answer to the public, although indirectly. The commitment to
demo cratic princi ples was so pervasive that during the debates over the Con-
stitution the convention delegates had virtually no discussion of inherited
po liti cal privilege or of the intergenerational transmission of office and power.
Perhaps the framers felt that this danger to popu lar sovereignty had been
thoroughly eradicated through the American Revolution.
In the Federalist Papers, widely recognized as the greatest contribution of
the United States to the cannon of po liti cal philosophy, the authors— Alexander
Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay— engaged in a great deal of discus-
sion about how the new Constitution would carefully guard against the abuse
of power by those elected or selected to lead the nation. Only one paper out
of the 85, however, even bothered to consider the issue of titles of nobility,
and none considered the issue of hereditary transmission of power
directly. In Federalist Paper 84, nearly as an afterthought, Hamilton wrote on
Introduction ix
“miscellaneous items,” including “titles of nobility.” On this, Hamilton was
notably brief. Writing in answer to critics of the Constitution who were con-
cerned about the lack of a Bill of Rights in the original proposed document,
and comparing the New York State Constitution with the proposed U.S.
Constitution, Hamilton noted that the “writ of habeas corpus, the prohibi-
tion of ex post facto laws, and of Titles of Nobility, to which we have no cor-
responding provision in our Constitution, are perhaps greater securities to
liberty and republicanism than any it [New York’s] contains.”3 On titles of
nobility, in par tic u lar, Hamilton seemed to take it for granted that the Amer-
ican Constitution was based on popu lar sovereignty, barring any system of
hereditary po liti cal privilege:
Nothing need be said to illustrate the importance of the prohibition of titles
of nobility. This may truly be denominated the cornerstone of republican
government; for so long as they are excluded t here can never be serious dan-
ger that the government will be any other than that of the p eople.4
For direct discussion of the challenges that hereditary po liti cal power posed
to demo cratic princi ples in the United States, the constitutional debates are
therefore not much of a guide. Instead, this was the g reat triumph of the Amer-
ican Revolution itself: to ensure that po liti cal power would be established by
the p eople, rather than by divine right or inheritance. For example, Thomas
Paine’s Common Sense (1776), was—by contrast to the Federalist Papers— direct
and forceful in its denunciation of hereditary po liti cal authority:
To the evil of monarchy we have added that of hereditary succession; and
as the first is a degradation and lessening of ourselves, so the second,
claimed as a m atter of right, is an insult and an imposition on posterity.
For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set
up his own family in perpetual preference to all o thers for ever . . .5
It appears that the assumption of the constitutional framers was that this issue
was settled in their revolutionary in de pen dence from E ngland. They had bro-
ken not just from E ngland but from the Eu ro pean heritage of monarchy and
nobility based on birth.
At the same time, a de cade after their Revolution and liberation, the new
nation’s leaders w ere thinking of how to provide for a more secure and stable
governance. Rather than rely on a buoyant burst of demo cratic spirit from the
masses, the framers of the Constitution sought instead to establish a careful
architecture of government that would rely on thoughtful leadership by estab-
lished elites. In the midst of this tension between a desire for elite gover-
nance and demo cratic legitimacy, Amer i ca fell upon a new kind of inherited
authority— the f amily po liti cal dynasty. No sooner had the Constitution been