Are Political Nepo Babies Bad For Democracy?

every presidential race from 1980 to 2016 featured either a Clinton or a bush this year a Kennedy is featuring prominently in the leadup to the 2024 election but even as Robert of Kennedy Jr benefits from his famous family's name and status on the campaign Trail the rest of the kennedies three of whom currently serve in Biden's Administration have not been psyched about rfk's campaign see for example the fuss they made after he ran a Super Bowl ad based on a 1950s JFK campaign ad or for example

when four of his family members wrote a public statement denouncing his candidacy as dangerous and deeply saddening unfortunately such criticism will likely just help convince his supporters that despite being part of one of the most stored political families in American history RFK is ready to disrupt the status quo but how much could a Kennedy someone who's a member of what many would call a political Dynasty actually disrupt the status quo what are the pros and cons of belonging to a politica

l Dynasty why would a democratic Nation founded with an explicit goal goal of eliminating inherited power even end up with political dynasties to begin with and what do these political nepo babies have to do with Trump this is how nepotism is ruining democracy roll the [Music] intro thank you to my partner on today's video Trade coffee I love trade coffee and also I just generally love coffee I'll drink it any way I can get it but my go-to is French Press dark roast decaf or if I'm feeling a lit

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what are you even waiting for go to drink trade.com Leia to save $15 on select plans and get your first bag of coffee for free thanks trade the idea of a dynastical democracy should really be a total contradiction but the Kennedy patriarch Joseph Patrick father to JFK and RFK senior was clear that he wanted to create a more lasting Dynasty than the Roosevelts interestingly the Roosevelts shouldn't even really count as a dynasty but we'll get into that in a minute Joseph Patrick Kennedy was a for

ce of nature who made his fortune on Wall Street in the 1920s serving for short periods as a bank president and steel Executive before parlaying his wealth and Catholic connections into appointments as the first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and later a US ambassador to Britain unfortunately Joseph ended up nuking his own political career when as ambassador to Britain he took an isolationist stance on World War II that was seen as defe as a result Joseph was recalled from hi

s diplomatic duties and all of his unfulfilled ambition landed on the shoulders of his sons competition was so Fierce among the Kennedy boys that one biographer posits that sibling rivalry ultimately led to the eldest brother's death when Jon received a hero's welcome home after surviving a particularly Dangerous Mission in World War II his older brother sat upstairs in the family home and cried Joe became so obsessed with outshining Jon that he took on increasingly risky missions in World War I

I even after he was supposed to come home until he died in combat in 1944 his passing devastated his father who pushed the remaining Kennedy Sons even harder to achieve political greatness he even fully funded and ran John's first political campaign in 1946 in 1960 John Fitzgerald Kennedy became the first Irish Catholic in the White House by the way Fitzgerald is his mother's maiden name which was worth keep keeping since her father was Boston's mayor and also served in the House of Representati

ves since John the Kennedy Clan has produced Senators Congressional Representatives ambassadors and even Lieutenant Governors the Kennedy family may indeed be the closest thing we've ever had to a royal family in this country the so-called Boston brahin with wealth connections and class to spare in many ways they exemplified the 20th century during which they made their Mark but is it a dynasty let's define our terms for much of recorded history political power and titles have passed through fam

ilies in the best case scenarios the practice was thought to support increased political stability and the peaceful transition of power in non-democratic systems some of these lineages stayed in power for centuries the Joe Dynasty in ancient China lasted nearly 800 years the habsburgs ruled Austria from 1282 to 1918 in Britain the Royal Line can be traced back to the 1500s Queen Elizabeth II herself reigned for more than 70 years with this context the kennedies suddenly don't seem so dynastic at

all the Oxford dictionary defines a dynasty as a line of hereditary rulers of a country but in political studies there's actually no formal standard for what counts a 2009 study defined a political Dynasty as any family that had previously placed a member in Congress a 2016 analysis required dynasties to include four successive Generations in the direct line elected to state or federal office and Steven hes author of America's political dynasties believed that any family with at least four memb

ers with the same name elected to federal office should be counted as a dynasty he later devised a ranking system in which points were awarded based on how important of a position each official held 10 points for president two points uh for uh for members of the House of Representatives under hess's system the Roosevelts who had a single pair of fifth cousins serve as president three times and 32 years apart and then not much else since are among the highest ranking dynasties in US history but S

teven hes has actually been pretty transparent about the fact that there's a publicity component to all of this Celebrity Status contributes as much to the names being recognized as the resumes attached that's why the second edition of his book carried the subtitle from Adams to Clinton despite H admitting that the clintons being related by marriage and from the same generation most definitely do not qualify in the traditional sense of the word still he believed the clintons merited in inclusion

because of their prominence at this historical moment in time and honestly fair enough H needed to sell books and the last name Clinton has been a major part of political conversations for longer than some of us have been alive within the average human lifespan it sure might feel like the clintons have a dynastic hold on our government but to call them a dynasty is a bit of a misnomer research shows that so-called dynasties typically fizzle out within three generations researcher Brian Cranston

no not that Brian Cranston identified 117 families with three generations in elect office in the US but only 12 families that continued past three successive Generations politicians it turns out just like other wealthy families follow the adage shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations meaning the first generation makes the wealth the second generation keeps it and the third generation loses it so if we look at what a true Dynasty entails centuries of rule and we look at our actual po

litical families who can only ever manage to keep any power for three generations at best it's actually not that impressive so what's all the hoopla about hoopla well well according to data compiled by Congressional historians between 1789 and 2016 400 parent child Duos have served in Congress plus 190 pairs of siblings but we peaked in political nepotism in 1848 when more than 16% of congressmen were filling the seat of a direct relative and things have chilled out considerably in the past few

decades since the mid 1960s only about 6% of lawmakers in Congress have been related to other members less than half the level of the early 1800s it turns out that dynastic politicians on average do not serve an office any longer than other lawmakers however prominent a political family is they're always ultimately accountable to the public and for as much as we love to build up and worship celebrities including celebrity politicians we sure love ripping them off the pedestal even more that bein

g said however being related however distantly to a politician has its advantages clearly a study you found that us politicians who held office for more than one term were 40% more likely to have a relative in Congress in the future than other members advantages of hailing from a successful Dynasty also include an established network of powerful supporters and potential donors and of course the intangible value of whatever political education is received as a result of growing up in a politicall

y active household former vice president Al Gore who grew up hanging around his father's Senate Office recalls making paper airplanes while I listen to the debates and over hearing one heated exchange between Gore senior and then President Kennedy Evangelical television personality and one-time presidential candidate Pat Robertson has said that his dad a senator from Virginia emphasized the importance of being on One's best behavior and anticipating what your constituents might think growing up

in a family like this gives you a huge advantage in terms of understanding the political game and according to former Missouri State Senator Jeff Smith if you understand the game you may end up spending less time banging your head against the wall learning how things work sounds like a pretty sweet Head Start particularly when it comes to campaigning and fundraising reminder that it now costs more than $15 million to win a senate seat and just over 2 million to get into the house that's an obsta

cle for True outsiders with zero political connections but really the true factor that sets political dynasties apart and is contributing to the success of RFK Junior's Third Party candidate race is that sweet sweet name recognition the fact that candidates print off countless lawn signs stickers and other promotional paraphernalia featuring only their name without any policy info makes it clear how important name recognition is and we've known this for decades back in 1962 political scientists

suggested that recognition carries a positive veilance to be perceived at all is to be perceived favorably this aligns with a more recent phenomenon on called the recognition juristic or recognition principle which states that if one of two objects is recognized and the other is not then people infer that the recognized object has the higher value voters are often more comfortable with the things they recognize name or brand recognition is a common focus in marketing because if consumers like an

d Trust one product they're more likely to favor another product from the same brand over an unknown or untested brand similarly voters will be more likely to favor a name they recognize once inside the polling booth on the other hand name recognition can become a double-edged sword resulting in a fatigue Factor among the electorate a 2015 poll about Americans views on political dynasties in the US found that two out of three Americans said they just wanted the best person and didn't care who th

eir family is 15% said dynasties are bad because they concentrate power 6% think it's a good thing because good qualities run in families and 8% said they're just tired of people named Kennedy Clinton and Bush however it's one thing for people to respond to a poll saying they're fatigued by dynasties but when they enter the voter Booth their actual Behavior likely aligns with what we know about humans inherent bias in favor of what they know and recognize another way name recognition can become

a double-edged sword is when you bring Decades of political baggage with you because of your name we've already established that the clintons aren't really a dynasty because it's two people who are married and in the same generation that does not a dynasty make but Hillary Clinton in running for president in 2016 brought with her Decades of baggage including the political baggage tied to her husband former President Bill Clinton her response to the Monica Lewinsky Scandal and the inherent biases

that people feel against women generally and especially women who seek power or don't Fade Into the Shadows however an interesting side effect of the political nepotism system in our politics is that baggage or not it allows women to gain power in ways they might not otherwise have access to without already existing political connections historically women have been more likely than men to enter politics through the dynastic Channel often this was accomplished through what's known as a Widow's

succession which happens when the wife of congressman is appointed to fill his seat technically this position was supposed to be temporary but many women have parlayed the opportunity into their own careers even before women gained suffrage using their time in office to establish their competency and going on to run their own successful campaigns for many years this was actually one of the most effective ways to get women into Congress in 1998 the LA Times reported that among firsttime house can

didates between 1916 and 1993 84% of the widows won while only 14% of the other women were victorious and the pattern holds worldwide in a recent study of 1,29 political Executives only 66 were women among them Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany the late Pakistani prime minister Benazir B Liberia's Nobel Peace Prize winning Ellen Johnson surle and president Dilma Rusev of Brazil of the 66 female Executives 19 had familial connections to politics 29% meanwhile 100 of the 963 men studied just ove

r 10% had Family Ties women who attain the highest office are more likely to come from political families than their male counterparts though at least today 71% of all the female world leaders reached their country's highest office without any family connections to politics at all women in the US have gained a modest political foothold in recent decades women now make up 28% of Congress 151 people compared to 1970 when there were 11 women in Congress but familial connection remains an asset for

women in politics for example Nancy Pelosi is a nepo baby her father and brother both served as mayor of Baltimore Sarah Huckabee Sanders is governor of Arkansas just like her dad was and West Virginia senator Shelley Moore capito is the daughter of West Virginia governor Arch Moore but it's not all upside in December 2002 Alaska's newly elected governor Frank marowski appointed his daughter Lisa to fill his senate seat and people were pissed the blatant nepotism fueled voter resentment and infl

amed mistrust of political insiders in 2006 the backlash was Swift daddy Frank didn't even make it onto the ballot getting knocked out in the primaries by populist princess Sarah Palin along with Sarah Palin came the rise of populism Nationwide a growing tea party movement in backlash to the election of our first black president who definitely was not an EPO baby and proliferation of the alt-right and a hyper conservative movement that would culminate in 2016 with the election of Donald Trump tr

ump symbolizes an ousting of the Old Guard a political Outsider come to drain the swamp according to his followers and while it would be a stretch to say that Trump brought in fresh faces with no ulterior motives to Washington we certainly also couldn't accuse him of being particular particularly concerned with the political acument of his advisers and with this turn towards populism and distrust in the political Elite has come the political demise of some American dynasties not just Hillary Cli

nton's loss in 2016 but also the demise of one George P bush not HW not w p George P bush George P bush is the son of Jeb nephew of George W and Grandson of George HW and he harbored political Ambitions from an early age in 199 2 when he was 16 he joined his famous family on stage at the Republican National Convention 8 years later when he spoke again at the RNC the handsome bilingual Bush was celebrated as a rising star that's right bilingual George P Bush's mother is from Mexico another unexpe

cted benefit of political nepotism once in a while a brown person can even wriggle their way into the RNC thanks nepotism some family insiders even started calling George P bush 47 as in the 47th president but the bush matriarch Barbara was not on board with young P's plans George P bush told me that he caught the political bug as a teenager but his grandmother Barbara Bush took him aside and said you can't run for office on the fact that your name is Bush you've got to go out and establish your

self in another career first thanks to his grandmother George P bush waited until age 37 to break into politics in 2015 he was elected as commissioner of the Texas General land office a role he held for two terms until 2023 his plan was to move up the ranks and become Texas Attorney General in 2022 but baby Bush didn't even make it to the ballot losing the Republican primary to a trump-backed candidate named Paxton whose Securities fraud trial is said to begin on April 15th of this year Paxton l

oved undermining bush in one fundraising letter he referred to P twice as Jeb Bush's son writing that he's probably been told since he was a child that his Destiny is to run for governor and then president despite his best efforts to align himself with the radical right even endorsing Trump's presidential run after his dad Jeb dropped out George p b Bush hasn't been able to convince voters to separate him from his family Legacy a study conducted by the Texas Hispanic policy foundation in April 2

022 examined why two- fifths of Republican primary voters say that they never would vote for George P bush 2third of these Republicans say a reason they never would vote for Bush is that he is a member of the Bush family the next most common reasons are his oversight of the Alamo and that he's not conservative enough that's Texas for you I guess see back in 2015 George P bush decided to move a monument commemorating those who died during The Alamo battle Bush argued that moving the monument was

necessary to preserve it but you know what they say about messing with Texas on the campaign Trail for attorney general Paxton characterized Bush as a liberal who had backed a woke plan to remove historic monuments this nafu combined with his mismanagement of federal hurricane recovery relief funds talk about runs in the family eh discriminated against people of color which is ironic cuz he's not white eroded whatever Goodwill he'd established and contributed to the backlash that got him kicked

out of office but it's bigger than Bush or bigger than this one specific Bush his loss marks a political shift among Texas Republicans generally away from what journalist James Baragon has called the pro bus establishment and toward a more populist combative and harsh style of politics in which opposition to immigration is a top priority in this climate the more Gentile bipartisan consensus that the bushes once seemed to embody is falling out of fashion at this moment the most important lineage

seems to be a philosophical one an ideal ological inheritance that's been steadily pumped through the Republican Party since at least 2008 as one UT San Antonio political scientist explained the Republican Party didn't know where it was going they knew where they were going only in opposition to Obama and that morphed into the Tea Party Movement and here we return once again to Trump we could argue that he's somewhat self-made at least as a politician since his dad never held office and that he'

s draining the swamp of all these intrenched dynastic families but for all his bragging on Fox news about ending the bush Dynasty Trump is very much in nepotism during his term his children both by Blood and by marriage became his Gatekeepers so much so that it took an intervention from Donald Trump Jr to convince the president to delay Federal approval of an environmentally harmful and politically controversial golden copper mine in Alaska this approach would be familiar to corders in early mod

ern Europe but it's not how policymaking is supposed to work in a liberal democracy this is just one reason that his administration is widely considered one of the most corrupt in recent history so where does that leave us nepotism is bad but pervasive but not pervasive enough to give us proper political dynasties but it certainly gives a small Elite Class of people more access to politics than your average no-name Joe Schmo with no political connections that could really be said of any professi

on if you have a lawyer in your family you'll understand the game better if you decide to go to law school and you'll go in with more connections than your non- neppo counterparts if you go into acting and your parents are already actors you'll be at a clear advantage that sucks in every industry for those of us with no connections but it's particularly worrisome in a democracy where at least in Theory were supposed to have free and fair elections and the people running for election should be re

presentative of the people themselves last I checked most Americans weren't born into wealth and friends in high political places so it's something to be skeptical of certainly but it's not necessarily pervasive to the point where it's impossible to get your foot in the door without the right last name in 2022 11 of the houses 435 members had parents that had previously served in the house that's about 2.5% but a year later the Pew Research Center observed a much more significant trend one that

serves as a much more telling and definitive sign that you will or will not end up serving in Congress more so than even having the last name Clinton or bush or Kennedy 94% of house members and 99% of senators had college degrees and I bet you'll be able to guess which tiny handful of schools are way over represented in our government when you search for Harvard University in the biographical directory of the United States Congress which you definitely should if you're bored it's super interesti

ng you'll find 111 instances of IV League education among current office holders even Trump who paints himself as a populist folk hero fighting the man bragged regularly about having gone to an IV this despite the fact that I'm still pretty sure he can't read and one study found that between June 2015 and January 2018 Trump referenced his warten school credentials no less than 52 times in a previous video I made about why we should abolish the ivy league we talked about the damage that our obses

sion with Elite colleges does to our students and our society the debt disappointment and diabolical levels of competition built into an Ivy League education are staggering but these schools are also breeding grounds for power and the few who make it into their innermost circles have a lot to gain in 2004 for example both presidential candidates were not just Yale alumni but had both been members of the same secret Club formed in the earliest days of the School founded in 1832 the Skull and Bone

s society was the first of a group of super exclusive power networks that now call themselves the ancient 8 in her excellent article for the Atlantic called skull and bones and equity and inclusion Rose horwitch writes three bonesmen yes they're called bonesmen would go on to become president of the United States it is among the wealthiest most exclusive most well-connected groups at one of the wealthiest most exclusive most well-connected universities in the country the clubs were originally in

tended to prepare Yale men for leadership beyond the University at this they have found extraordinary success producing a stream of seite Executives diplomats and politicians based on this description you'd probably expect all the members of skull and bones and secret societies like it to be inbred white dudes dressed like they were born inside a Ralph Lor renad a few decades ago you would have been right but since the 1960s change has gradually infiltrated these exclusive circles to preserve th

eir group's Legacy Skull and Bones has had to adapt in a sense breaking with tradition in order for it to continue in 1965 the first black member was admitted in 1975 the head of y's recently founded gay student organization joint in 1991 the first bones Woman made it into the club and in 2020 Skull and Bones had its first entirely non-white class horwitch writes many of the societies now have only one or two students each year who aren't from historically marginalized groups today the idea of S

kull and Bones selecting someone whose dad was a Republican president seems inconceivable so instead of passing privilege down a hereditary line today the power in our politics is being passed down through highly selective universities and the highly selective secret clubs within them but interestingly where once these clubs were home to rich white dudes they've since been co-opted by bipo and lgbtq students they argue that the best Pathway to progress is to diversify the elite instead of shutti

ng down these secret societies they should be opened up to members of previously excluded groups as horwitch reported one student recalls being tapped by a senior who wanted to keep the Latino line going once inside that student focused on a different diversity metric I chose three trans people they told me that was my specific goal but it turns out in everything but demographics little has changed for this particular secret society despite early in enthusiasm for an initiative put forth by the

society that would redistribute the society's massive endowments to the community in New Haven one which is famously working class in stark contrast to the culture inside y's walls despite this initiative no radical change has materialized everyone still just goes to the fancy dinners and enjoys all the perks of rubbing elbows with some of the most powerful alumni in the world and listen I'm not going to begrudge historically marginalized folks for want in a slice of the sweet sweet Elite pie bu

t it does make you wonder how much change can really happen from within in the walls of these Elite schools even as they continue to diversify especially when you realize that Diversified identities don't exactly mean Diversified backgrounds more than half of the low-income black students at Elite colleges attended top private schools meaning that pricey prep schools are maintaining their choke hold on the ivy league pipeline consider this in the past 5 years the Dalton school in Manhattan has s

ent about a third of its graduates to the ivy league a third same with the Spence School Dalton's all girls counterpart Harvard West Lake in Los Angeles sent 45 kids to Harvard Harvard in 2021 alone Noble and Greeno School in Massachusetts got 50 kids into Harvard with price tags of up to $75,000 a year for high school even scholarship students are being indoctrinated with the values of the so-called ruling class specifically that a certain Cutthroat approach to life is rewarded as the saying go

es power begs power so what are those of us without direct access to that kind of power to do well we start our own clubs what it really comes down to is that much of power and privilege is simply a lottery not just in terms of what family you're born into but when as current patriarch of the Republican Party Trump has dethroned most of the distinguished lineages that came before him and Infused our government and most troublingly our highest court with his own ideological offspring that being s

aid Trump is not in any way the populist every man that his followers for some reason continue to believe he has benefited from nepotism his entire life and he likes to surround himself with people who have his weal I mean talk about a secret society the Supreme Court even with Trump's appointee is probably the most elite most secret of them all not only did six of the nine current Supreme Court Justices clerk for other Supreme Court Justices as newly minted lawyers but two of them Kavanaugh and

Gorsuch went to the same elite private school Georgetown prep and all of them either went to Yale or Harvard except for Amy Coney Barrett who went to Notre Dame meanwhile the Heritage Foundation with their absolutely unhinged project 2025 see my video All About project 2025 is attempting to organize the many disperate players on the conservative field part Playbook part training institute part power Network project 2025 is designed to act as an incubator for hard-right candidates that will enac

t policies that the majority of Americans don't actually want like Banning same-sex marriage and abortion in a way project 2025 is taking nepotism out of the picture at least in theory they're saying come one in all together we all must work for this shared dystopic hellish vision of the future the elites no previous experience required Democrats don't have anything like it as we look ahead to the 2024 presidential race many Americans are are feeling understandably disillusioned with the options

two old white guys one entrenched in politics for half a century the other a rich whiny nepo baby who always gets his way where is the progressive Powerhouse that lefties can actually get behind well it turns out that some of them might be busy training among the ranks of the ivy League's most exclusive societies but for everyone else a new line of inheritance has to be created if you don't have to be born in to get in then it's just a club and you know what you should do if a club doesn't let

you in start your own Grassroots growth is possible and progress is being made by organizations like run for something a group dedicated to helping new Progressive leaders run efficient strategic Grassroots driven campaigns since launching in January 2017 run for something has recruited nearly a 100,000 people across all 50 states to run for state or local office they've helped District judges city councilors state senators and more find their footing and get elected another group blue leadershi

p identified three key barriers to outside candidates succeeding in politics they are lack of steady income and cyclical unemployment limited access to political networks and jobs and lack of individual long-term training they address these problems by offering financial support leadership training and long-term campaign career path development the native Leadership Institute does similar work providing free programs to support indigenous people becoming leaders in all levels of government and t

he higher Heights leadership fund is focused on addressing the dir of organizing resources for politically active black women and the lack of support for those considering a run for office to date their work has helped elect 11 black women to Congress as well as the first black woman to serve as New York State Attorney General as Steven has put it we're always going to have dynasties it's in the cards we are a free country we elect people what we don't have we don't always have the same dynastie

s dynasties die and dynasties are born so what have we learned today RFK is using his famous last name to get votes but he's tied as much to Modern Republican far-right conspiracy theorists as he is to the values and Legacies of the Kennedy Clan like pretty much every other career including doctors and lawyers professions often run in families whether it's because of an inherited interest skill set or access to power is impossible to say probably all the above while this accounts for a single di

gigit percentage of our public servants benefiting from hereditary nepotism the United States does not and never has had any true political dynasties in fact the EB and flow of popularity of various political families over time is an example of democracy working pretty much how it's supposed to in this the land of opportunity education is even more important than bloodline and access to the exclusive power networks concentrated in Elite institutions functions as its own kind of inheritance Trump

and his cronies are an ideological unit and to defeat them we'll need to get a new generation of progressive leaders ready for battle rallying around new voices is crucial and the organizations working strategically to support them is our best hope of undermining project 2025 thank you to my patreon community and my YouTube members for supporting the research and work that goes into these videos consider checking out my patreon community or clicking the big join button below to become a member

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