Bush, Clinton, Bush.....Clinton???

[illinoisprogressive]

ASHINGTON - Forty percent of Americans have never lived when there wasn't a Bush or a Clinton in the White House. Anyone got a problem with that?
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With Hillary Rodham Clinton hoping to tack another four or eight "Clinton" years on to the Bush-Clinton-Bush presidential pattern that already has held sway for two decades, talk of Bush-Clinton fatigue is increasingly cropping up in the national political debate.

The dominance of the two families in U.S. presidential politics is unprecedented. (The closest comparisons are the father-son presidencies of John Adams and John Quincy Adams, whose single terms were separated by eight years, and the presidencies of fifth cousins Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt, whose collective 20 years as president were separated by a quarter-century.)

"We now have a younger generation and middle-age generation who are going to think about national politics through the Bush-Clinton prism," said Princeton University political historian Julian Zelizer, 37, whose first chance to vote for president was 1988, the year the first President Bush was elected. And as for the question of fatigue, Zelizer added: "It's not just that we've heard their names a lot, but we've had a lot of problems with their names."

And now, if Hillary Clinton were to be elected and re-elected, the nation could go 28 years in a row with the same two families governing the country. Add the elder Bush's terms as vice president, and that would be 36 years straight with a Bush or Clinton in the White House.

Already, for 116 million Americans, there has never been a time when there wasn't a Bush or Clinton in the White House, either as president or vice president.

Does a nation of 303 million people really have only two families qualified to run the show?

David Gergen, director of Harvard University's Center for Public Leadership and an adviser to presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton, said there does seem to be concern about the possibility of giving "the two dynasties" another four or eight years.

"I think we would be fundamentally healthier if we broadened the zone of candidates who could make it to the top," he said.

Historically, politics has been open to newcomers who rise up to reflect the grass-roots sentiment of the country, Gergen said.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070928/ap_on_el_pr/bush_clinton_fatigue_2

[Xipe Totec]

1. Joker Ace Joker Ace. Your point? n/t

[TankLV]

12. EXACTLY. You got that right...

[Zywiec]

2. What's the definition of oligarchy? n/t

[killbotfactory]

3. Term limits are a joke

What's the point if it's just going to be the same groups of people in power under different figureheads?

[illinoisprogressive]

4. Use your relatives to go around a constitutional amendment and to hell with everything else.

[ShortnFiery]

5. Our founders did not want either "A Unitary Executive" nor "Political Dynasties" to run the USA nt

[orpupilofnature57]

6. It's not an Image, it's a management job.Should of got past Al's lack of

Mediappeal ,unlike thee guy you'd like to have a beer with ,or at least 7 yrs. ago

[bronxiteforever]

7. No Royal Houses-Its the People's White House

[illinoisprogressive]

9. I feel it's a mockery of what a real democracy should be about

[bronxiteforever]

10. I find it deeply disturbing as a member of the democratic party

to consolidate the power of the party in one family

[MetalCanuck]

8. This is what happens when CFR members get in to the White house.

They want to keep their power going so they with their willing partner in the media tell you who is and who isn't a viable Candidate. Then like a Bunch of sheep you vote for who they want. They are so called "Front Runners" on both sides.

It is a country run by business and the media. People have to wake up to that.

[TankLV]

11. bush fatigue - definitely - Clinton - only fond memories of PEACE HOPE PROSPERITY

as far as the eye could see, only to have it ruined by another bush* - this time a USURPER and WAR CRIMINAL...

we could do a LOT worse - infinitely worse - with another Clinton in OUR White House, IMO...

Let's see - a couple Roosevelts - the second one better than the first...

A couple Adams - history is mixed on that at best - so I'd call it a wash...

There was another family pairing I think that I can't remember right now...

Ahh - the Harrisons.

It depends on the family and the person...

It's a part of history and life - I'm ready for a couple more Kennedys myself...

But I agree with the GENERAL thrust of this thread - dynasties are by themselves NOT a good thing - as long as we don't make a LONG habit of it...

Definitely NO MORE BUSHES. PERIOD.

[Maribelle]

13. Bush Clinton Gore Kerry Clinton

That's the way it should have been.

Too bad you are blaming Hillary for that corrupt Supreme Court, which thwarted the constitution, and the corrupt neoconservatives that stole the election.

[TankLV]

14. how about Kennedy, Johnson, Kennedy...

or even Kennedy Kennedy...

we were robbed TWICE back then...

what a shame THAT couldn't have happened...

[Maribelle]

15. That's so true.

It is a shame.

[Cameron27]

17. Wouldn't that have been something,

how different things would have been.

[bronxiteforever]

18. Hillary is no Bobby Kennedy-He came out against the Vietnam War

and Hillary in Iraq?

[democratsin08]

16. will chelsea be old enough to run in 2016?

that would be awesome!!

[wyldwolf]

19. no, carter, mondale, dukakis, CLINTON, CLINTON, gore, kerry, CLINTON

[NoPasaran]

20. Right now the R's are up by one Bush. We need a Clinton to even the score

I'm in my fifties and I've never known a time when a carbon-based lifeform wasn't President. O the injustice!

[gulliver]

21. A new morsel of Republican claptrap meme-spew.

As if the fatigue were Bush/Clinton. It's Bush unhappiness, Clinton happiness, and the Bush unhappiness is so bad it drags the average into "fatigue." This is just like the way they slimily average the economic prosperity numbers in their Republican spiel about Bush and Clinton years. This was in the New Republic. The Republicans add all of Clinton's prosperity years to the beginning part of the Bush "median income disaster" years and end up with an "average" of improved median income.

These Republicans deal in dirty numbers, dirty accounting, dirty pool... This article is just more of that -- merely another way for the Republicans to sell their lipsticked pig of an ideology. It's not capitalism, it's not values, it's not piety/holiness. It's crookedness, meanness, and lying. Good people in the GOP are starting the smell it. That's why there is such an upsurge for independents and Dems.

[2rth2pwr]

22. Here's an interesting picture