JEB BUSH V. HILLARY CLINTON: THE PERFECTLY ILLUSTRATIVE ELECTION
Jeb Bush yesterday strongly suggested he was running for President in 2016. If he wins the GOP nomination, it is highly likely that his opponent for the presidency would be Hillary Clinton.
Having someone who is the brother of one former president and the son of another run against the wife of still another former president would be sweetly illustrative of all sorts of degraded and illusory aspects of American life, from meritocracy to class mobility. That one of those two families exploited its vast wealth to obtain political power, while the other exploited its political power to obtain vast wealth, makes it more illustrative still: of the virtually complete merger between political and economic power, of the fundamentally oligarchical framework that drives American political life.
Then there are their similar constituencies: what Politico termed “money men” instantly celebrated Jeb Bush’s likely candidacy, while the same publication noted just last month how Wall Street has long been unable to contain its collective glee over a likely Hillary Clinton presidency. The two ruling families have, unsurprisingly, developed a movingly warm relationship befitting their position: the matriarch of the Bush family (former First Lady Barbara) has described the Clinton patriarch (former President Bill) as a virtual family member, noting that her son, George W., affectionately calls his predecessor “my brother by another mother.”
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/17/jeb-bush-v-hillary-clinton-perfectly-illustrative-election/
Barbara Bush gushes about Bill Clinton, says he treats George H. W. Bush like a father
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/barbara-bush-gushes-bill-clinton-treats-george-h-w-bush-father-article-1.1113917
= new reply since forum marked as read
Poppy heard it from George Wallace.
And no matter who we vote in, nothing changes.
Getting back to Hillary vs. Jebthro: This image has me wondering about our national back-story...
Kennebunkport, July 30, 1983: Bill Clinton, George Bush & George Wallace
Wallace and his third wife, the former Lisa Taylor, meet with Vice President George Bush and Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton at a lobster bake at Bush's residence at Kennebunkport, Maine, July 30, 1983. The third Mrs. Wallace, whom the governor married in 1981, was 30 years his junior and half of a country-western singing duo, Mona and Lisa, who had performed during his campaign in 1968.
CREDIT: AP/Birmingham Post
SOURCE: http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/george-wallace/13/
Octafish thanks for all the great content!
the real problem is the "self-perpetuating" part, since we've gotten plenty of results since 1789
in most elections you're not buying a basket of policies ("well, N's trade policies are crap, but everything else is okay or at least indifferent, and they're a real leader on wind and solar"
: no, you're choosing one person over another; that person can be representative, but the only ways to make them be or not-be is either removal from office or campaign finance laws
so no matter how unrepresentative they are, they're still legitimated by having won an election
Sid
