Dynasties: An American Tradition

From 1775, when the Adamses began raising their sons to be president, to 2006, in the second term of the second Bush president, this country has been through 230 years of dynastic ambition, with fairly uneven results. Taken together, four families have given us five presidents, three vice presidents, five senators, four governors, four ambassadors to major foreign powers, and four members, including one past and one future president, of the House of Representatives. This sounds impressive, and is, until the downside is counted: one certain and one probable suicide, multiple deaths in what can be called young adulthood, numerous lives either warped or distorted, and more alcoholics and drug users than one can easily count. Well-meaning dynasts have pushed sons to accomplish large goals that they might not have dreamed of achieving, but they have also pushed sons till they broke, pushed them into the wrong line of work, where they were embarrassed, or set them adrift at levels of fame and temptation that exceeded their power to cope.

Dynasties start with an impulse to power that transcends the life of one man. In the case of the Adamses, the Gores, and the Kennedys, they began with the will of one founding father, who pointed his children at one place—the presidency—and began rigorous training in childhood. The Roosevelt drama began in reverse—a son-driven dynasty—with the wish of two younger Roosevelts, Franklin and Ted Jr., to seize and latch on to the mantle of Theodore, the hero and father-figure to both. Between these two poles, we encounter the Bushes, a dynasty, not quite so dynastic, a low-key dynasty, an “accidental dynasty,” a reluctant dynasty, a dynasty that denies that it is one. Most dynasties are top-down, and begin with a bang: the decision of a Gore or a Kennedy male to create a succession. The Bushes are bottom-up, and built up by increments: Prescott Bush was a New Englander and a gentleman-banker who dabbled in politics as almost an after-thought; George H.W. Bush was a transitional figure who moved from New England to Texas and seemed more of a diplomat even while president; Jeb and George W. are pure politicians, and products of the south and the west.

Dynastic sons have been president during the two scariest moments of the current half-century: on September 11, 2001, when Islamist terrorists struck New York and Washington, and in October, 1962, when atomic missiles capable of striking New York and Washington were discovered in Cuba. Dynastic sons—no fewer than three of them—helped steer the country to the edge of a constitutional breakdown after the 2000 election was tied. Dynastic dynamics had combined with partisan interests to create a near-shipwreck. Would it have been fought with such murderous passion if the three men concerned in it did not have so much to prove to their kin?