Dynasty

If Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination for president in 2008, I'll probably vote for her in the general election. But I hope she doesn't win; I don't want her to be president. Not that she wouldn't make a good president. Maybe she would, maybe she wouldn't. All I know is that a second President Clinton would be a very bad thing for our country.

If Senator Clinton becomes President Clinton, that will mean that two families will have ruled the United States for a quarter of a century. Our country has been run by someone named Bush or Clinton since 1988; that's the kind of sequential family dynasty that our forefathers rebelled against in 1776.

It doesn't matter whether this Bush or that Clinton was a good or a bad ruler; the idea of a ruling family (or two) is antithetical to a healthy democracy. America was not created as a monarchy. We are supposed to be a country of the people, for the people, not a kingdom ruled by the privileged few.

Think if the trends continue. Senator Clinton wins in 2008, and maybe gets re-elected in 2012. By that time, the Bush stench has subsided and brother Jeb wins the Republican nomination and the general election in 2016. If he gets re-elected in 2020, we're now looking at a dual-family dynasty from 1988 through 2024 -- 36 years of Bush and Clinton. That would have been unthinkable to our founding fathers, and should be unacceptable to us today.

Again, I'm not judging Senator Clinton's fitness for the job. Personally, I think she's both a shrill and canny political manipulator, skilled and intelligent yet two-faced and purely interested in her own political ambition. In that regard, she's not unlike the two-faced Republicans currently in the race, such as Giuliani and McCain, both of whom are selling their souls for the blessing of the religious right. All things said and done, I'll take a two-faced quasi-liberal over a two-faced quasi-conservative any day.

That said, I'd rather have a better choice, as would most Americans. That's where someone like Barack Obama or John Edwards has appeal; Obama for his freshness and lack of old-school political ties, and Edwards for his populist stance and positive message. I think either of these gentleman would make a fine candidate and a fine leader. We need new faces and new ideas, not the tired old political platitudes and certainly not another member of our two-family royal dynasty.

So that's why I'm anti-Clinton, and think she should be taken out of the race before the primaries are over. She should sacrifice her own ambition for the good of the country; the Bush-Clinton dynasty should end with King George II.

But that's just my opinion; reasonable minds may disagree.