Matt Yglesias has a post up, Illusions of Rationalism, where he seems to dismiss some of the anger in the Left-blogosphere at the coronation of Princess Caroline. Like Matt, I don’t really care that much who gets anointed to the throne of the junior Senator from New York, though that has much to do with my relative minimal investment in the particularities of the Democrats within the legislative branch. Yglesias is correct to note:
But of course that’s not how things work at all. The whole business of electioneering is full of irrationality and tradition all the way from top to bottom. The notion that all members of the Kennedy family are ex officio considered plausible candidates for public office is weird, but it’s a particular oddity that exists against background conditions that are also odd….
I think a word which would add more precise clarity here would be “meritocracy,” as opposed to rationality in a general sense. Obviously unlike career civil servants elected officials don’t have to pass any test, and have minimal constraints placed up them (citizenship, age, etc.).
Aspects of dynasticism, plutocracy, oligarchy, democracy, technocracy, etc., coexist in the structure of most polities. But their weights vary as a function of time and place. Consider the changes in the nature of the American system, the emphasis on democracy is far greater today than it was at the Founding. It is arguable that a republic which was founded to protect the property and standing of an enlightened 18th century oligarchy transformed itself in the early 19th into one which was more singularly democratic, where the will of the people notionally reigned supreme (see The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln). The veritable Presidential cults which emerged around Andrew Jackson and F. D. R. are natural outcomes of this sort of populism; Julius Caesar’s dictatorship was supported by the urban proletariat, and Octavian’s despotism was popular with the commons because of the peace and stability which it promised.
I do not refer to the Emperors of Rome to suggest that American Presidents are quite yet despots. Rather, I want to acknowledge that the visceral reactions to the whiff of dynasticism implicit in Caroline Kennedy’s assumption of the throne are natural, because people know in their gut the power of personalities over politics. The overclass, Left & Right, have strong ideological beliefs. Parties reflect these beliefs, conceptions of how a society should be ordered to foster human flourishing. Political dynasties often obscure this, and turn on the magnetism of personality over policy. Jackson and F. D. R. both arguably retarded the emergence of ideologically parties after they left the scene because of the shadow of their popularity. My family is from Bangladesh where the two parties, who are roughly Center-Left and Center-Right, are the extended courts of two rival royal dynasties. Similarly, Pakistan’s PPP is a vehicle for the Bhutto party above & beyond its notional socialist origins. Russia does not have a robust party system, simply a collection of parties who align themselves around Vladimir Putin. The political peregrinations of Juan Peron were enabled by the devotion which he engendered in his followers.
The Whig party in the 1840s reclaimed the Presidency from the Democrats, who were gifted with the charisma of Jackson, by nominating military men with ideological orientations just as vacuous. Their campaigns hinged around inane slogans such as “Tippecanoe and Tyler too!”. Of course history did not march in one direction, the 1850s witnessed the emergence of a Republican party which took a stand on clear and distinct issues, and won due to their radical courage and adherence to principles. A republican government will always have to navigate the tension between personality and policy. The appointment of Caroline Kennedy will mean little in the short-term, but I over the long term the power of dynastic politics mitigates against the crisp ideological sorting which the broader overclass has an affinity for.
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