"No more dynasties"--for women, that is

[Jim Lane]

206. About FDR and JFK

Nobody here is praising FDR because he was the fifth cousin of a previous President. That hardly makes a dynasty. Nor are people here enthused that he campaigned (in 1932) on a promise of a balanced budget. People here are clamoring for the Democratic Party to return to the spirit in which he actually governed -- taking bold action to help the people, even if it means infuriating the moneyed class.

I can't picture Hillary Clinton (or, for that matter, Barack Obama) saying anything like what Roosevelt did in a 1936 speech looking back on his first term:

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.

There are two different substantive approaches here. Do you believe in seeking progress through triangulation and finding a nice warm purple space, or through fighting against the oligarchs and welcoming their hatred. DUers who have preferred FDR over Clinton have done so because they favor the latter approach.

If FDR got some advantage from being a fifth cousin of a former President, JFK got none, not being related to any former President (although of course his family was rich, as is true of many politicians of both parties and both sexes). Neither FDR nor JFK was in a class with Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton. For both of the latter, we may safely conclude that their being in the immediate family of a President was a critical factor in their rising to national prominence.

Among current leaders, the same DUers who consider Hillary Clinton to be too conservative tend to have the same opinion of Andrew Cuomo. He's like Hillary and Jeb in terms of the importance of the family (or, if you will, dynastic) relationship to his career, but many of us think that he is far inferior to his father.

The bottom line is that I don't see a double standard being applied by progressives. We have reasons for finding flaws in Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, and Andrew Cuomo, reasons unrelated to gender.