Walter Rodgers: Political Dynasties (Romney, Bush, Kennedy) Betray Basic American Values

Walter Rodgers is a former senior international correspondent for CNN.

...[O]ver the past half century, no two families have been as powerful as the Bushes and Kennedys. They share deep New England roots and a seeming sense of entitlement to the White House....

This practice of hereditary ambition and home-grown royalty betrays a basic premise of the American Revolution, “that all men are created equal.”

Andrew Jackson’s defeat of incumbent John Quincy Adams swept away much of our earlier faith in ruling families, and successive waves of immigrants made a mockery of it....

Yet in the past 50 years in America, we have had to ride out allegations of rape, manslaughter, drug abuse, infidelity, and drunkenness in our “royal families,” overlooking all this on the medieval assumption that those with better bloodlines are somehow beyond reproach or the law....