Man. I thought we got rid of hereditary monarchies in 1776, but that's a helluva lot longer than most kings served.
Speaker of the House and President pro tempore of the Senate are both higher, and plainly more important.
It can also easily be argued that the Chief Justice and Fed Chair (granted the Fed occupies an unusual quasi-government role, it's fully within the control of the US Government) positions are far more important, influential, and powerful as far as the Federal Government is concerned, compared to the Secretary of State.
> Speaker of the House and President pro tempore of the Senate are both higher, and plainly more important.
There's an easy measure by which Secretary of State is third; they succeed after the vice president. Why are the two you listed "plainly" more important than Secretary of State?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_lin...
Vice President (also nominally the leader of the Senate)
Speaker of the House
President pro tempore of the Senate
Cabinet by seniority of the cabinet position, starting w State
Webster Hubbell is apparently her real father, apparently it's a fairly open secret.
I'm not sure what the above proves. Neither then nor now is what's going on anything like a hereditary monarchy. For one thing, Hillary Clinton is not the heir of Bill Clinton. And in both cases other people have been in the mix holding power. Washington during Adam's Vice Presidency. Obama during Hillary Clinton's Secretaryship of State. Which kind of kills the "mono" part of a "monarchy" -- if there are a bunch of different people from a bunch of different families running around with power. (Is "polyarchy" a word?)
So don't get too freaked.
(Also, plenty of first world democracies have hereditary monarchs. The United Kingdom, Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, Australia, Canada, Japan, etc. The existence of a hereditary monarchy isn't necessarily anti-democratic.)
Oligarchy, per the OP.
There are not "three" executive offices of the US and the secretary of state certainly isn't one of the three. It's the highest rank cabinet position, but definitely not in the same category as president/vice president.
1928
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/in-the-loop/post/who-wa...
Of course half the democratic operatives worked for one or the other on the campaign... and aides and fundraisers are a key part of the oligarchic elite.
>>Every year between one quarter and one half of the membership turns over, and Gregory argues this creates a situation where elected student leaders become dependent on student union staff for institutional memory and guidance.
Although Obama was president, Bill Clinton's former Chief of Staff, Leon Panetta, who is very close to him personally was Secretary of Defense and Director of the CIA while Bill Clinton's wife was Secretary of State. All top positions in the Department of Defense, CIA, and Department of State are connected to this very small group. It's amazing that Obama is president and Bill Clinton's closest allies are in top positions. Long after the Clintons are gone their influence will remain in the 'institutional memory'.
Legislators transitioning in and out regularly would just move the power from their hands into their staffers' hands.. aka people who are hired and fired without any public recognition or even knowing who they are.
The more troubling thing about the U.S. is, that the public demands qualities from their leaders which bear no meaningful predictive power on their leadership skills. At best, these politicians are a "costly signal" for the competency and reliability of the party behind that leader, whose members or employees are duing the actual work of governance.
Interesting, watching US politics from the outside it seems like Obama (OK, the executive branch) has a hell of a lot of power. Personally I agree with a lot of his recent "legacy forging" executive orders, but they sure don't feel very democratic.
If Jeb Bush became president, I would expect a very Bush-like reign. War with Iran, for example.
At India's Independence, Jawaharlal Nehru was the Prime Minister. His daughter, Indira, married Ferozeshah Ghandy [1], who was born into a Parsi family.
Indira Gandhi's son Rajiv Gandhi married an Italian woman, who is now known as Sonia Gandhi [2]
Sonia Gandhi's son Rahul Gandhi is now a Member of Parliament.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feroze_Gandhi [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Gandhi
It's quite common for children to follow in their parents footsteps. Parents of any field can train their children in that field providing significant advantage over other children. Would it not stand to reason that children of politicians are best positioned to be politicians themselves?
Sure, but there are arguably 300 million people in America who "would like to be president" I imagine. It's every child's dream, isn't it? To grow up to be president one day?
There are millions of people who want to play professional basketball, too. And many more "professional basketball player" positions available as there are POTUS. But even still, after the ~3,000 professional basketball players that the NBA has seen pass through it's doors, only 78 of them have become "second generation" professional basketball players. [0]
The odds of both sons of a former POTUS becoming (or even having a strong chance of becoming, in Jeb's case) president are just out of this world when compared to other disciplines.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_second-generation_Nati...
edit: I changed 10,000 pro basketball players to ~3,000 as per forrestthewoods's info below.
I wonder what the rate for lawyers is. I have cousins that are fourth generation lawyer. How many lawyers had a parent or grandparent as a lawyer? I bet it's a lot.
Are people complaining that the new Canadian PM is a child of a former PM? Maybe politicians are better if they were around politicians as children. Not just more likely to win. But actually better leaders. I don't know. I'm not saying they are. But I'm not saying they aren't either.