a name america trusts

i was listening to npr just now, and someone said something to the effect of, ‘there’s no difference between any of the democratic candidates’. while that’s largely true, from the perspective of positions, and general collective preferability to the loathsome and embarrassing administration currently in the white house, there is one difference that concerns me.

i’ll be fine, frankly, with either hillary clinton or barack obama. both of them carry with them the promise of a presidency that we need not be ashamed of. i think that clinton is the better qualified of the two, but i think that obama is more electable (i.e. half the country doesn’t spit when saying his name). i would put either of them in office over a republican with a smile on my face.

the one thing that gives me pause though, is the pattern that electing hillary clinton would establish. our country was founded by people who were pretty darned tired of dynastic, hereditary rule, and while we’re still able to vote democratically, it’s not that simple. there’s a softer form of succession going on now, born of money, familiarity, and connections. bush the second was an easier sell because we knew bush the first, and it won’t be a surprise to have to contemplate a president jeb someday. and even though it’s wrong to compare hillary clinton to george w. bush, they are alike in that their road to the white house was greased by our already knowing their name.

it’s not monarchy, it’s branding. for the same reasons tv shows have spinoffs, the same reason times square is now a bigger, pricier version of your standard strip mall, the same reason the cookie aisle reduced to variants on oreos and chips ahoy, we someday run the risk of being sold what we’ve shown that we’ve wanted over and over again.

one hopes that we’ll still be able to pick a person, not a brand.

on the other hand, we could all be talking about president huckabee a year from now. the horror.