Dynasties

How Dynasties Sank the GOP and the Democrats

The power of the Houses of Bush and Clinton was supposed to define the race. Instead, their weaknesses blew it up.

 By David S. Bernstein

No matter what happens on Super Tuesday, it’s clear who the real losers will be on election night: The Democratic and Republican parties. An election season that began as a presumptive showdown between two inevitable dynastic front-runners—Jeb Bush vs. Hillary Clinton—has now devolved into an electoral dumpster fire. And it’s time to name the culprit: The dynasties themselves.

From the earliest stages of this election—the so-called invisible primary for funding and top-level staffers—the House of Bush and House of Clinton hoarded the race’s resources. So much so, that they broke the process and made room for outsider candidates who now pose existential threats to the parties themselves. Jeb is already out, and there’s an inclination to feel sorry for him—but the damage he wrought by vaporizing $150 million is a weakened establishment and a Trump juggernaut that will take a small miracle to defeat. On the Democratic side, it looks like Hillary will survive—but her party will have to live with a candidate who, voters have made clear, has the wrong message for its mood. Well into the spring, she’ll have to weather a crowdfunded socialist whose grass-roots campaign is bleeding young people and women from her base, while whacking her on her Wall Street ties. And she’ll head into the fall with a risky email scandal hanging over her head.

If this cycle teaches us anything, it’s that political dynasties are bad for parties the way monopolies are bad for business: They impede competition, and reward power rather than merit. Voters—both Republican and Democrat—have rejected the unassailability and inevitability of the Bush and Clinton dynasties. What’s troubling is that the parties didn’t—that they were blinded by the name on the packaging, not realizing how weakened both candidates had become.

Many of the two parties’ insiders, fundraisers, activists, elected officials and staffers are no more than one degree removed from the Clintons or Bushes. Many owe their jobs to the former presidents, or their networks. Equally as important, no GOP candidate without the Bush dynasty behind him would have been able to deny his rivals funding in the crucial, early primary states.

“A lot of us stayed on the sidelines,” says Nancy Dwight, former executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee and longtime New Hampshire political activist. She ultimately endorsed Ohio Governor John Kasich; others she knows are still on the sidelines. “We didn’t want to say no to the Bushes, or say we were against our friends.”

For their part, neither Bush nor Clinton seemed to realize how their own parties had changed since the last time they campaigned—2008 for Hillary, 2002 for Jeb. “The party changes so fast,” says Stuart Stevens, political consultant and former Mitt Romney strategist. “It’s like the NFL—you can’t go up in the booth for a couple of seasons and then go back.”

“For both Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton, as a legacy you can be insulated from the realities of your party,” says Dante Scala, assistant professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire. “It’s great to have all these resources available to you, but it can enlarge your blind spot. You lose your ear for politics.”

The Bush dynasty was already putting its imprint on the race in March 2015, three months before Jeb announced his presidential campaign. It began with a tweet that sent a buzz through New Hampshire political circles.

To some in New Hampshire political circles, this picture of the likely presidential candidate with his father’s former chief of staff—John H. Sununu, one of the state’s most powerful Republicans—was one of many reminders to officials, fundraisers, activists and staffers of the reach and influence of the Bush family. (Sununu never did endorse Bush, in deference, people say, to his son, former Senator John E. Sununu, a close friend of Kasich. He remained officially neutral, but periodically expressed his preference for a “governor or former governor.”)

During critical early months before his June 2015 announcement, while less-established candidates needed to build their national operations and fundraising teams, Bush tried to freeze the field. In late 2014 and early 2015, some top Republican operatives in New Hampshire told me that Bush had asked them not to commit to any other candidate until he gave the word. It didn’t work on everybody—Jim Merrill, who ran New Hampshire for Romney, signed on with Marco Rubio in early 2015—but it did on some. To put it bluntly, no other ex-governor—especially one eight years removed from the political arena—would have been able to consolidate so much party support and resources. “The GOP has always coronated its nominees,” says Scala. “Why shouldn’t Jeb have expected to be coronated, like his brother?”

In sharp contrast to previous cycles, elected officials across the country conspicuously refrained from endorsing. That might have been partly due to flaws with the other candidates—Governor Chris Christie was embroiled in a bridge-closing scandal, for instance.

But it certainly has been striking to see the flood of endorsements for Rubio coming the moment Bush dropped out of the race. Not when Bush’s national poll numbers plunged into single digits last year, or when he finished sixth with 3 percent of the Iowa vote.

Then there was the circling of fundraising wagons. In October 2015, the campaign released a list of 341 early fundraisers that, USA Today wrote, “reads like a who’s who of Republican politics.” That helped explain the lack of early fundraising by other equally credible candidates.

At the midway point of 2015, establishment pariah Ted Cruz led the GOP pack, with close to $15 million raised. Rubio—largely shut out in his home state of Florida by the Bush machine—did best within traditional party circles, coming up with $8.6 million by the end of June. Rand Paul had $5.3 million. Others had to wait until the third quarter to start, and they hardly broke the bank: From July through September, the combined campaigns of Kasich, Christie, Scott Walker, Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal raised well under $20 million. Repeat: Combined.

Compare those figures with the 2008 GOP field. When John McCain’s campaign raised just $13 million by June 2007, it was seen as evidence of a “collapse.” By then, Rudy Giuliani and Romney had each raised more than $30 million. And there was enough left on the table for Fred Thompson to raise $16 in four months beginning in June.

The story was even more stark when you look at Bush’s impact on super PACs. “There’s a limited amount of resources out there,” Stevens says, “and a vast amount of it went to Right to Rise.” Indeed: Right to Rise had raised a staggering $100 million by the time Bush officially entered the race in June 2015. That hurt his opponents, but didn’t help him. “The evidence is very clear,” says Bill Mayer of Northeastern University, “that the Bush family name helped him with the fundraising, probably helped with the consultants, and hurt him tremendously with the voters.”

Looking back, it’s fair to ask: How much of the chaos of the race was engendered simply by Bush being in it? The dynasty was great at launching the campaign—but it also inspired great antipathy. Bush sucked up a lot of funding, yet he didn’t keep the field clear. In fact, 15 other candidates thought his name would be enough of a liability that they got into the race. Thanks to Jeb, they just couldn’t find a foothold.

While Bush was looking for his coronation, Clinton was receiving hers. By June 2015, she had raised $47 million, with another $15 million in her main super PAC. She has been ahead of even Al Gore’s 2000 pace for endorsements, according to the analysis at FiveThirtyEight.com, let alone other eventual nominees. To this day only three members of the House of Representatives—and no U.S. senators or governors—have endorsed another Democrat.

To be sure, Clinton was a deserving front-runner: a former U.S. senator, secretary of state, and runner-up in the party’s last nominating contest. But that doesn’t entirely explain the nearly unanimous support from party actors. “In all my years of watching presidential campaigns, I’ve never seen anything like what the party did this time,” says Northeastern’s Mayer. “The Democratic National Committee really put its thumb on the scale.”

Many observers also accused the official party structure, and in particular Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz—a national co-chair of Clinton’s 2008 campaign—of rigging what was already a massively tilted process. That included scheduling very few debates, at obscure viewing times, with rules that some said were designed to sideline challengers. There were some close ties between DNC and HRC personnel, and critics charged that Wasserman Schultz used the inappropriate access of voter data as a pretext to punish the Bernie Sanders campaign at a crucial juncture.

Clinton certainly has issues as a candidate. Her favorability ratings are more than 10 points underwater—20 points in the crucial swing state of Ohio, according to a Quinnipiac poll this month. She was exposed as out of step with her party eight years ago; She has a history of same-sex marriage opposition, tough-on-crime policies, military hawkishness, Wall Street coziness and questionable campaign-finance practices that she has altered to fit the current party’s beliefs. Today, she is struggling to catch a rapidly moving target—in a party that tends to favor a fresh face in its nominees. The GOP, like a traditionalist white-shoe firm, is the one that wants tried-and-proven nominees: Romney, McCain, Bob Dole, and George H. W. Bush all ran and lost at least once before getting the nomination. Democrats tend to favor first-time candidates who fit the party at the moment, including John F. Kennedy, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, John Kerry and Barack Obama.

The Clinton dynasty is turning into a lose-lose proposition. Exit polls make clear that younger voters—for whom the Clinton-era ‘90s exist only in reruns and history books—are not fawning at the Clinton name: Sanders took more than 80 percent of voters 18 to 29 in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. In fact, the main reason Sanders appears to have held his own among Nevada Hispanics is because they are so young—three times as likely to be under 30 than other caucus attendees. Clinton “is going to have to deal with this generational fallout,” says Scala. “That’s the issue for any legacy candidate. Not only is she running for Obama’s third term, her name is a name of the past.”

That’s the other problem with political dynasties: The election becomes a referendum on the family name. “Clearly she has the overriding support of the super-delegates, she initially raised a lot more money than anybody else—but she’s a very problematic candidate” says Mayer. “And too bad for the Democrats they don’t have a mainstream alternative to her.”

There’s another downside to dynastic candidates: the other living members. Bush fumbled when addressing his brother’s record on the war in Iraq, the economy, and even 9/11. And while contending with the legacy of two previous presidents, Jeb’s father and brother were notably absent on the campaign trail —right up to the moment in South Carolina when Dubya thoroughly upstaged the candidate, and failed to save him from a campaign-ending distant fourth-place finish. Meanwhile, Trump has been foreshadowing his plan of attack in a general election by going after Bill Clinton’s infidelities. And Hillary has been forced to answer for her husband’s policies on criminal justice, welfare, and gay rights. African-Americans have now forgiven Bill Clinton for his demeaning comments during the campaign eight years ago—most notoriously, comparing Obama’s South Carolina victory to Jesse Jackson’s—but his broadsides against Sanders earlier this month were a reminder of how polarizing he can be.

A stronger Democratic field—one that hadn’t been scared off or starved by the Clinton dynasty—might have given the party a stronger option against an unconventional opponent like Trump. The Sanders phenomenon has been fueled by a remarkably deep reservoir of antipathy—one that Clinton and her team clearly never saw coming. With another mainstream Democrat in the race, a far-left outsider like Bernie would likely have had a much narrower lane to strike. Instead, Sanders has played Clinton essentially to a draw in the early voting states, and raised close to $100 million—guaranteeing he’ll be around to harass her even if she wins big in the South.

A common argument I hear was that the candidate pool was simply shallow this time around, because of a weak Democratic bench after tough 2010 and 2014 elections. There’s a grain of truth to that, but just a grain. Consider that Cory Booker, Andrew Cuomo, Kirstin Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, Terry McAuliffe, Janet Napolitano, Jay Nixon, Brian Schweitzer, Kathleen Sebelius, Tom Udall, and Mark Warner were among many—along with Martin O’Malley—who could have vied for party support, had there been any available.

The dumpster-fire 2016 election does not seem to be forcing any significant degree of self-reflection about both parties’ embrace of dynastic candidates. It should. Dynastic American politics—from John and John Quincy Adams to George and Mitt Romney—have always been an uncomfortable fit with America’s self-image as a monarchy-ousting land of self-made success. But 21st century voters seem especially unwelcoming to the notion of power and influence built up by one politician transferring to a relative.

Strong familial ties in national politics—with their accompanying powerful networks—have certainly helped in the nomination process, but haven’t always guaranteed an easy path. President William Henry Harrison’s grandson Benjamin needed eight ballots and extensive maneuvering to win the Republican nomination in 1888. Vice President Adlai Stevenson I’s grandson won the 1952 Democratic nomination on the third ballot, allowing himself to be drafted at the convention; he was renominated in 1956 despite many Democrats, including former President Harry S Truman, turning against him. Ted Kennedy’s 1980 attempt to follow his brother Jack into the White House, by upending incumbent Jimmy Carter, failed. These and other family lines all suffered their downfalls, often creating more turmoil for their party along the way.

Will this cycle finally teach the parties their lesson? Not necessarily: After Clinton and Bush, there are still prominent familial candidates on the way: Just look at Rand Paul, who made an early exit but is young enough, at 53, to be back again. Or up-and-coming Congressman Joe Kennedy III, who at 35 is the oldest of Jack, Bobby and Ted’s grandchildren and surely not the last to follow their political path. Or Romney’s five sons, of whom, Tagg, is considered most likely to run for office. Or Jeb’s own son, George P. Bush, already establishing the beginnings of a public record as Texas Land Commissioner. This year’s race suggests the lure of dynastic power is finally losing its hold on voters. But the examples of Joe Kennedy III, Rand Paul and countless others suggests they aren’t exactly losing their hold on political operatives, for whom a name brand is always going to seem like an asset.

“I think these are the flaws of two specific dynasties,” says Mayer. “The Clinton dynasty would be doing fine, except the only candidate they had after Bill was Hillary. The Bush dynasty might still be going strong, if George W. had been a halfway decent president.”