Political Offices Are Not Meant to Be Family Heirlooms
Ace of Spades, making his case for his friend Mike Flynn in the special House election in Illinois's eighth congressional district, made an interesting point in an aside: Mike Flynn's opponent is not a bad man, I imagine. But he seems to have fallen into country-club Republican politics the same way many hardware store owners' sons fall into hardware. Not out of any particular interest in the subject matter, but because it's the easiest way to make a comfortable living. You've got the connections, you've got the in, and, heck, your name is already written on the awning over the door. As the son of Roy LaHood, former liberal Republican Congressman turned Obama Transportation Secretary, Darin LaHood is just the sort of man the Establishment likes. But there's a key difference between, say, Jeffrey Beaumont taking over his dad Tom's Beaumont hardware Store in North Carolina* and sons and daughters taking over their father's or mother's elected offices upon their retirement. Look, if you build the family business, you're entitled to hand it down to your children. To contradict our president, "You built that. Somebody else didn't make that happen." If you do build something, you'll have a lot of discretion about how you spend the money that comes in, and who takes over when you leave the scene. If you think junior's got what it takes to run the place well, you go right ahead. But political offices aren't supposed to be family heirlooms. Because they didn't build that. They don't own those offices; they occupy them -- at our discretion. Of course both parties have their dynasties and offspring gliding relatively easily into elected office. On the GOP side, there's son-of-a-senator George H.W. Bush, and his offspring George W. Bush and Jeb Bush, and of course Jeb's son, Texas land commissioner George P. Bush. Then there's Liz Cheney, Ben Quayle, and Shelley Moore Capito (her father was governor of West Virginia), Last November, the election of an 18-year-old Republican state delegate in West Virginia was a brief sensation . . . of course, her election seems less stunning when you realize her father is a state senator and was a state delegate for many years. On the Democratic side, Hillary clearly climbed to the top with a lot of help from Bill; Almost every key race for Democrats in the red states in 2014 featured some offspring of a longtime political figure: Jimmy Carter's grandson Jason Carter running for governor in Georgia, Florida congressional candidate Gwen Graham, Georgia Senate candidate Michelle Nunn, Senator Mark Begich (his father was Alaska's congressman), Senator Mary Landrieu (her father was mayor of New Orleans), Arkansas senator Mark Pryor . . . then there's New York governor Andrew Cuomo, California governor Jerry Brown (his father was governor), and the entire Kennedy clan . . . (You'll recall quite a few folks contended Caroline Kennedy was a terrific choice for U.S. Ambassador to Japan because she had "good genes." Suddenly there's widespread belief that ambassadorial skill is contained in DNA strands.) Earlier this year, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz did a bit of number-crunching and calculated that the power of nepotism -- or the natural advantage of having a successful parent -- was much more intense in politics than in other fields: I went through a wide range of fields and found a consistent pattern: greater success for the sons, but nothing like the edge a winning politician provides. Here is the estimated parental edge for other big American prizes and positions. An American male is 4,582 times more likely to become an Army general if his father was one; 1,895 times more likely to become a famous C.E.O.; 1,639 times more likely to win a Pulitzer Prize; 1,497 times more likely to win a Grammy; and 1,361 times more likely to win an Academy Award. Those are pretty decent odds, but they do not come close to the 8,500 times more likely a senator's son is to find himself chatting with John McCain or Dianne Feinstein in the Senate cloakroom. These kids of political figures might be really nice guys. But they embody the argument of Angelo Codevilla that America today has an unprecedentedly uniform "ruling class": Never has there been so little diversity within America's upper crust. Always, in America as elsewhere, some people have been wealthier and more powerful than others. But until our own time America's upper crust was a mixture of people who had gained prominence in a variety of ways, who drew their money and status from different sources and were not predictably of one mind on any given matter. The Boston Brahmins, the New York financiers, the land barons of California, Texas, and Florida, the industrialists of Pittsburgh, the Southern aristocracy, and the hardscrabble politicians who made it big in Chicago or Memphis had little contact with one another. Few had much contact with government, and "bureaucrat" was a dirty word for all. So was "social engineering." Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday's upper crust imposed a single orthodoxy about the origins of man, about American history, and about how America should be governed. All that has changed. Today's ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters -- speaking the "in" language -- serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America's ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government. *We all know Jeffrey Beaumont changed his name, joined the FBI, and was hired to work a case in the Pacific Northwest. Everybody Can See the Iran Negotiations Going Bad Except Obama and Kerry BREAKING: The only people who want their names associated with the Iran deal are Barack Obama and John Kerry. Five former members of President Obama's inner circle of Iran advisers have written an open letter expressing concern that a pending accord to stem Iran's nuclear program "may fall short of meeting the administration's own standard of a 'good' agreement" and laying out a series of minimum requirements that Iran must agree to in coming days for them to support a final deal. Several of the senior officials said the letter was prompted by concern that Mr. Obama's negotiators were headed toward concessions that would weaken international inspection of Iran's facilities, back away from forcing Tehran to reveal its suspected past work on weapons, and allow Iranian research and development that would put it on a course to resuming intensive production of nuclear fuel as soon as the accord expires. The letter's signers include . . . Obama's former Iran czar Dennis Ross and General David Petraeus. The Left Greets Candidate Bobby Jindal with Its Signature Intolerance There is something quite vile in the way progressives have their racism attached to a light switch, flipping it on the moment they encounter a minority Republican or conservative. Last night, Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandvi offered a slew of "you might be Jindian" tweets, and used the hashtag, #bobbyjindalissowhite. Among his Tweets, "You might be a #Jindian when you say; "if we hide who we are we will lose" unless of course it's your name & ur religion." Bobby Jindal is Catholic. He converted when he was a teenager. He's quite open about it, which makes one wonder how this comedian can contend Jindal is "hiding" it. Apparently Aasif Mandvi believes that no Catholic can be an authentic Indian, or no Indian can be an authentic Catholic. In any other circumstance, a statement that "all people in this group must share these characteristics" is precisely the sort of statement would be denounced and mocked by The Daily Show. The New Republic tweeted out an article on "Dinesh D'Souza, Bobby Jindal, and the shame of immigrant self-hatred." 
(Never mind that Bobby Jindal was born in Baton Rouge, making him quite the unusual candidate for "immigrant self-hatred." I pointed out to TNR senior editor Jeet Herr that "I remember when insinuating that a presidential candidate was born outside the USA was a HUGE deal." The Washington Post touted a profile of Jindal with this quote: "There's not much Indian left in Bobby Jindal," said Pearson Cross, a political science professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette who is writing a book on the governor. Here's Pearson Cross, by the way:  "Dr. Cross advises the College Democrats and is chair of the Constitution Day Committee." No word on what credentials he has as the Indian-American Authenticity Police. Can We Ever Scrap the Current Tax Code? I'm informed that Let Freedom Ring, a public policy non-profit organization committed to promoting Constitutional government, free enterprise, and traditional values, will release national survey results this morning that indicate -- surprise! -- lots of Americans want to scrap the current federal tax code, and they like the idea of setting the current code to expire at the end of 2019 as a way of forcing tax reform. The national survey of 1,008 respondents was conducted last week by McLaughlin and Associates, a national polling firm. Respondents were asked if the current federal tax code is "generally fair and equitable" or is it "unfair to the average taxpayer because it favors special interests through special incentives, exemptions and loopholes?" The survey found 75 percent said the current tax code is unfair, 72.6 percent of self-identified Democrats, 73.3 percent of self-identified Republicans and 81.3 percent of self-identified independents. The pollsters also asked, "Would you support or oppose terminating the current tax code at the end of 2019 as a way of forcing the Congress to enact tax reform before then?" The survey found 69.9 percent supported, 72.9 percent of Republicans, 68.9 percent of Democrats, and 68.1 percent of independents; 9.7 percent opposed, and 20.4 percent didn't know. The group adds: Legislation to sunset the code has been filed in the House by Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), where it has 81 cosponsors, and it is being ushered through the House Ways and Means committee by Congressman Kevin Brady (R-TX). Citizens who wish to learn more may visit: http://www.SunsetTheCode.com. ADDENDA: Here's the video of my remarks and Q & A at the Conservative Forum of Silicon Valley. I felt like it went fantastic; judge for yourself. | 
Comments
Post a Comment