The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

End of Dynasties, Please

The ailing Ted Kennedy has said that he would like the successor to his seat be his wife, Vicki. Isn’t this rather richly ironic since Kennedy has done all he can to stop the Clintons from extending their White House dynasty by opposing Hillary’s election to the presidency? Ted’s Senate seat has been in his family for more than 50 years. (It was previously JFK’s.) I’m from Massachusetts, so I know that voters there are reluctant to accept that they have free will when it comes to the political ambitions of Kennedys, but it’s unseemly and un-American for this clan to think it has a permanent claim on any office. XX’s own Rosa Brooks pointed out that the late Benazir Bhutto, seen in this country as a champion of democracy, named her son as her successor in her will. Brooks wrote, “To Bhutto, political power was something one could inherit, something to be passed along from spouse to spouse and from parent to child. … That's dynastic politics, not democratic politics.” Dynastic politics hasn’t worked out very well for us lately. If a candidate is a member of a political family and is also by all measures worthy of being elected to office, fine. But let’s stop choosing our elected officials because they’re married to, or children of, officeholders.