THE EVIDENCE IS EVERYWHERE that nepotism is becoming a major issue in American life. If no one in Washington is calling it a major problem, that’s only because to describe it as such would insult virtually the entire leadership of both major parties. We are in the absurd situation where our current president is the son of the president-before-last, the other son of the president-before-last is mentioned as our possible next Republican president, and the pack of possible future Democratic presidents is led by the wife of our last president.
Imagine that some Rip van Winkle had fallen asleep twenty years ago and been told that our Republican governors included a Taft and a Romney, and that among our newer Republican Senators were Chafee, Dole, Sununu, and Murkowski. And, of course, to assemble a full archive of Democratic congressional legacies–the various Pelosis and Kennedys and Udalls and Bentsens–would require a new hard drive for your computer.
If you broaden your definition of nepotism beyond the mere passing of offices from generation to generation, then nepotism begins to look like the Senate’s operating principle. Imagine how the recent shift in leadership would look if you were a citizen desperately interested in health-care issues. You would be in transition from a world in which the Senate majority leader is the husband of one of the mightiest lobbyists in Washington (Linda Daschle) to a world in which the Senate majority leader is a major shareholder in one of the country’s great hospital empires (the Frist family’s HCA).
It is our system–or perhaps our moment in history–that deserves the blame for this, not the individual practitioners/beneficiaries of nepotism. It is the impulse of mothers and fathers and spouses to do all they can for their children and mates, and that impulse is powerful when unleashed. What has (up till now) kept our political culture from turning into a hereditary aristocracy is that there have always been powerful countervailing impulses: political ones. It used to be that “the issues”–as they’re nostalgically called–were so important that a familiar-sounding name was insufficient to win a voter’s trust. Occasionally, the issues found their best champions among political hidalgos–from the Adamses to the LaFollettes to the Longs–but this happened infrequently, relative to today. People no longer care enough to look beyond a surname. The best evidence that our own public life has been depoliticized is the proliferation of politicians with the sobriquet “Junior”–like our president, or like the Jesse Jackson who represents Illinois’s 2nd district or the Harold Ford who represents Tennessee’s 9th.
American voters may think they despise the way politicians “selfishly” pursue family interests in politics. This is hypocrisy. First, most of them would do the same. And, second, nepotism is not exactly selfish. It doesn’t generally help a politician–at least not personally. As in non-political life, the main thing that prevents a political parent from doing all he can for his offspring is a larger-than-normal endowment of cowardice or greed or ambition. As governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton showed himself politically ambitious, not “fair,” when he insisted that his drug-dealing half-brother Roger get the same treatment in the state’s criminal justice system as any other schmoe. Tom Daschle, meanwhile, showed himself uxorious rather than greedy when he bowed out of a run for president in 2004, to the extent that he made that decision to protect his wife’s lobbying practice. And it is Gov. Frank Murkowski’s paternal instincts more than his hardball ones that have landed him (and the GOP) in hot water in Alaska.
Murkowski, it will be recalled, was elected governor last fall, and in that capacity was permitted by law to fill the Senate seat he had vacated. He chose his daughter Lisa, who is unpopular (partly for her abortion stand) among the very conservatives who were her father’s base. In fact, she stands a chance next year of losing a hitherto invincible Republican seat. Dad Murkowski must be proud, but Governor Murkowski surely doesn’t need this headache.
In this sense, Dad or Governor (but let’s just call him Frank) Murkowski has done what Americans hypocritically tell pollsters they actually want: He has put principle above politics. What principle? A variant of the one E.M. Forster enunciated on patriotism: “If I had to choose between helping my country and helping my family, I hope I should have the guts to help . . . em . . . Junior.”
Christopher Caldwell is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard.
