Turns out that the emergence of dynasties among political families is as American as apple pie.
President Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, hasn’t even said whether she’s going to run for Senator Tillis’s open seat in 2026, and there is already grousing among the cognoscenti. “Does America want another political dynasty?” asks Newsweek. A professor at the University of Virginia, Barbara Perry, suggests Mr. Trump is “grooming” members of the clan, including Lara, Donald Jr., and even Barron, “to carry on the family’s political ambitions.”
Count on more such hand-wringing if Ms. Trump throws her hat in the ring. Dynastic fears were fanned in the the 2024 election by, say, Bloomberg, which reported that some voters feared Mr. Trump’s children could succeed him and “we’ll just have some fake monarchy.” Carolina columnist Celia Rivenbark has said that the idea of a Trump dynasty left her as “terrified as a clutch of sorority girls hearing about the nationwide shortage of White Claw.”
It’s hard to square such alarm, even if tongue-in-cheek, with America’s tradition of multiple generations of service within its political families. That custom has prevailed despite one of the most emphatic prohibitions in the Constitution — being the bar against any attempts to create a home-grown aristocracy. “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States,” the parchment asserts. Nor may such title be granted by a state.
Tell that to the Bushes, say, or the Adamses. Not to mention the Kennedys. That dynasty started in 1892 with John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald’s seat in the Bay State legislature. He went on to serve as Boston’s mayor and in the House of Representatives. His grandson, John F. Kennedy, occupied Fitzgerald’s House seat before winning a Senate seat and then the presidency. While in office, he nominated his brother Robert F. Kennedy to serve as Attorney General.
Bobby in 1964 won election to the Senate from New York, and he was running for president in 1968 when he was assassinated. Yet his brother Edward “Ted” Kennedy had in 1962 won election to the Senate, a perch he occupied until his death in 2009. One would be remiss, too, to leave off the roster Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., serving as Mr. Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary. So the Trumps have a way to go if they want to catch up to the Kennedys.
Feature, too, the dynasty commenced by Prescott Bush, who represented Connecticut in the Senate between 1952 and 1963. His son George H.W. Bush was Reagan’s vice president before serving a single term as president. Prescott’s grandson, George W. Bush, was the governor of Texas before winning the presidency in 2000. Jeb Bush served two terms as Florida’s governor, but his son, George P. Bush, has so far failed to win election to higher office.
The Clintons are another dynasty that is, for now, grounded. Bill Clinton was “first in his class” of Baby Boomers, as David Maraniss put it in his biography, to attain the presidency. That followed service as the attorney general and governor of Arkansas. His wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, won election to the Senate from New York, but her presidential aspirations were in 2016 thwarted by Mr. Trump. No word, yet, on any plans by Chelsea Clinton.
Virginia’s Harrison family marked another American dynasty, spawning three presidents: William Henry, Benjamin, and the more distant relation Abraham Lincoln. The Adamses, too, included in their ranks the second president, John, as well as the sixth, John Quincy. The Roosevelt brood featured Presidents Theodore as well as Franklin Delano, who ended the dynasty, for now, with an unprecedented four terms in the White House.
Which brings us back to a prospective Trump dynasty. “I’m not convinced anyone else can replicate Donald Trump’s unique style or appeal,” cautions Northeastern University’s Costas Panagopoulos. “They may have just broke the mold after they made him.” Who’s to say, though? It’s nice to know that, in contrast to the titles of nobility on which our Founders frowned, the choice for Lara Trump’s generation, and others, will be up to the voters.
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