Barone: Bush v. Clinton: America's War of the Roses?

CAMPAIGN 2008
Battle Royal

Bush, Clinton, Bush--Clinton? It sounds like the War of the Roses.
BY MICHAEL BARONE Monday, January 29, 2007 12:01 a.m.

Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton. It sounds like the Wars of the Roses: Lancaster, York, Lancaster, York.

To compare our political struggles to the conflicts between rival dynasties may be carrying it too far. But we have become, I think, a nation that is less small-r republican and more royalist than it used to be. Viscerally, this strikes me as a bad thing. But as I've thought about it, I've decided that something can be said for the increasing royalism of our politics. And whether you like it or not, you can't deny it's there. Not when the wife of the 42nd president is a leading candidate to succeed the 43rd president who in turn is the son of the 41st president. The two George Bushes are referred to in their family, we are told, as 41 and 43. If Hillary Clinton wins, will she and her husband call each other 42 and 44?

Evidence for my case comes from the recent set-to in the White House press room after reporters had learned that Laura Bush had made no public announcement when she had a skin cancer routinely removed. When Press Secretary Tony Snow said it was a private matter, reporters spun out theories why Mrs. Bush had a duty to disclose this minor surgery to the American public--even though she is not a public official and even though the operation had no impact on the operation of government. But reporters instinctively sense that the doings of Mrs. Bush are as newsworthy as their British counterparts regard those of the royal family. And they have some reason to. Her husband started just about every campaign speech by praising his decision to "marry up." Her high approval ratings take some of the edge off his low ones.

"Royalty," wrote Walter Bagehot in his 1867 book "The English Constitution," "is a government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated in one person doing interesting actions. A Republic is a government in which attention is divided between many, who are all doing uninteresting things." He went on to note that the Monarchy (his capitals) was not just one person but several. "A family on the throne is an interesting idea also. It also brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life." So we have columnists writing that the current president's policies are a sort of oedipal rebellion against his father. And we have endless speculations on the dynamics of the Clintons' relationship. The personal has become the political. In Bagehot's England they were separate: The Monarchy was personal, the Palmerstons and Gladstones and Disraelis political. Now political reporters are getting ready to grind out pieces about the families of the 2008 presidential candidates.

There was always a risk of royalism under our Constitution, with the president both head of government and head of state. But for a long time politicians struggled against it. George Washington turned down a crown. John Adams did not make public the scintillating intellect of his wife Abigail. For half the time in the first 40 years of the 19th century there was no first lady at all: Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren were widowers when they took office. After the Civil War, politics revolved so much around parties rather than presidents--can you name all the presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt?--that in the 1880s the future President Woodrow Wilson wrote a book called "Congressional Government."

The drift toward royalism is a 20th-century phenomenon. At first it was concealed. Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft had strong-willed, intelligent wives and broods of children who went on to impressive achievements. But they didn't make much of this public. Woodrow Wilson's first wife, a Southerner who died early in his presidency, reportedly pushed for racial segregation in federal building cafeterias, while his second wife effectively ran the White House while he was incapacitated by a stroke--neither something you'd want to talk about even now. Lou Henry Hoover, an engineering school classmate of her husband, directed her public energies to promoting the Girl Scouts. With Eleanor Roosevelt, we come to the first first lady with a political identity of her own. But she was just one of many courtiers in her husband's White House, and not necessarily the most influential.

Harry Truman did not bring Bess Truman to Potsdam; she spent much of his presidency at home in Independence with her elderly mother. Mamie Eisenhower said that "Ike runs the country and I turn the pork chops." But ever since John Kennedy made a point of bringing his French-speaking wife to Paris, where she charmed the seemingly uncharmable Charles de Gaulle, most presidents and presidential candidates have made a habit of showcasing their wives. And most of their wives have made a point of taking up some public cause or other, some of them controversial. First ladies increasingly became public figures and, given the considerable talents and charm of presidential wives since that time, political assets.

Now we have our first first lady to run for president. She brings to the race a formidable asset that few presidential candidates can claim: a first-hand knowledge of the operations of the White House. But then Queen Elizabeth II, who has had weekly audiences for 55 years with 10 prime ministers from Winston Churchill to Tony Blair, would probably be a pretty good prime minister were she eligible for the office. (She's not: By law, she can't set foot in the House of Commons.)

Sen. Clinton was more involved in making public policy than any other first lady except possibly Sarah Childress Polk, who was her husband's chief secretary and worked alongside him in his office. But there is something bizarre--something royal--about the vision of the wife of a former president becoming president herself, although those of us who voted for George W. Bush are poorly positioned to complain about it.

And perhaps we shouldn't. Because the royalism of republican politics is not just an American phenomenon. You see it in other very large republics. India for 37 of the 42 years after independence had members of one family as head of government--Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, grandfather and daughter, mother and son. Rajiv Gandhi's widow is now head of the governing party. Indonesia elected as president the daughter of a former president.

So did the Philippines. Maybe there is a reason for this. It's hard in a very large democracy for voters to judge a potential leader. They can gather some information on his or her positions on issues, but they rely on an inevitably imperfect (and often biased) media. If they are strongly on the side of one party, they can vote for that party's candidate; but in the United States at least they have some voice (at least if they live in Iowa or New Hampshire) in determining who that candidate is. They have a hard time ascertaining the ability and character of candidates. But in making judgments about those things, it helps if you know the family.

Not that anyone assumes that family members are all alike. It would not do for candidate Bush in 2000 and for candidate Clinton today to claim to be clones of his father and her husband. Rather, candidate Bush made comments about his mother's fearsomeness, and candidate Clinton's "let's chat" suggests that she is more of a listener and less of a nonstop talker than her husband. So the trend to royalism may not be all bad. It does give some candidates an unfair advantage over others. But let's face it: Only four of the 300 million living Americans has been president and probably only 10 or 12 more ever will be. We need as much knowledge of our presidential candidates as we can get and, if we get some of it by knowing their families as closely as we know the families of recent occupants of the White House, so be it. As Bagehot put it, "The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other."

In any case, it's no sure thing that a Clinton will follow a Bush who followed a Clinton who followed a Bush. But keep the following in the back of your mind. George P. Bush will be eligible to run for president in 2012. Chelsea Clinton will be eligible to run for president in 2016. So will Jenna and Barbara Bush, who will turn 35 several days after the election. And Jeb Bush, who had a fine record in eight years as governor of Florida, will be younger in 2024 than John McCain will be in 2008 or Ronald Reagan was in 1984. Royalism may be here to stay.

Mr. Barone is a senior writer at U.S. News & World Report and coauthor of "The Almanac of American Politics" (National Journal Group).

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