Sunday, November 25, 2007

Bruce Fein's "Anti-Dynasty" Amendment

Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, endorses Bruce Fein's draft of a Constitutional amendment to prevent political family dynasties.

Although I'd love to be safe from a Hillary Clinton presidency via Constitutional fiat, it seems that these proposals are just fundamentally antidemocratic. As Andrew Sullivan notes, the easiest way to prevent such dynasties is to defeat wives/husbands/sons/daughters of current political elites at the ballot box.

2 comments:

TJE said...

Amar argues that age requirement for President was intended to prevent dynastic succession. A topic for future discussion?

Liz said...

That's very interesting but I fail to see what it will accomplish. I've certainly had my fill of Bush and Clinton as well-- still, every citizen of this country is ostensibly equal and has a legitimate right to office. Regardless of their surname. Ultimately, the party has the most significant say in the primary and personally I'd like to see a little self-regulation there. More emphasis on ideology and less on name recognition would be nice.