I find it remarkable that on the surface I now know of three G7 countries / liberal democracies where the PM/President is the (grand)son of a PM/President himself.
Bush Sr - Bush Jr
Pierre Trudeau - Justin Trudeau
Nobusuke Kishi - (Shintaro Abe; FM) - Shinzo Abe
[Honorary mention: France with "Le Pen" both father & daughter made it to the second round in the presidential elections (2002; 2017 and 2022)]
Half of the entire point of the democratic turn in western states after the enlightenment and the French revolution was to attempt take power away from powerful families and abolish heritable power.
I found it very alarming when Trudeau Jr was plucked out of relative obscurity and turned into a political figure here, and I found it quite absurd that he won with hardly any experience or qualification beyond his family name.
Especially when the other centre-left opposition candidate at the time (Mulcair&the NDP) was very strong, an extremely competent opposition leader with strong support in Quebec, a long political history and a strong base, and the NDP were polling in majority territory prior to (and in the early part) the election. Honestly, I'm still bitter about that election and its results. I think it's actually turned out disastrous for Canada.
Of course it'd be nice if our politicians were well-educated in the details of the policies they are championing, and if they could independently reason about the pros and cons, but realistically that's not what they're there for. They're like the sales guys at work - they might have some personal interest in techy details, but it's not what they're hired to do or what they excel at. They're hired to make the sales, not the product.
I think the party strategists who picked a pretty face and a familiar name to represent the party did a decent job. Trudeau continues to have the confidence of most of his party, which is why he's still in the leadership position. He's clearly inoffensive enough that he can maintain support inside the party while also not igniting enough of a backlash amongst the voting public to indisputably defeat his party in 2021. He might be a milquetoast character representing an ideologically unadventurous party, but perhaps that's all he's meant to be?
They were able to ride out the pandemic with some overall reasonable policies, and most of the stuff that annoyed people fell on the provinces.
But they're clearly having a hard time transitioning now, and the Singh giving them a blank check has made them extra complacent. The stuff at the airports on its own is inexcusable. ArriveCAN needs to go. They need to respond boldly to this Rogers fiasco from Friday. They feel entirely flat footed to me.
The expiration date is all over Trudeau and he needs to do the right thing and GTFO. And he needs to do it in a way that doesn't stiff Freeland and leave her in a Kim Campbell or Kathleen Wynne or Paul Martin type position.
He needs to announce his resignation ASAP and call a leadership convention even if it's a coronation for Freeland.
Singh I think has cost the NDP pretty much almost all their seats in the next election by propping Trudeau up right now. I have always voted NDP but I don't know what I'll do next time around.
I say this as a left wing voter who doesn't want to see the Conservatives in charge. But every day they hold on they're just giving the Conservatives more momentum, even without a leader.
I think when strategists look back they'll see Trudeau as a mistake. It got them power, but he was no Chretien or Trudeau Sr. He has been weak on policy and on leadership. And it will cost them in the long run. They blew their 3 gov'ts by basically getting almost nothing actually done on all their files they were so boldly proclaiming. It reminds me a lot of McGuinty's term: at the end most of the problems created by Mike Harris still hadn't been reversed. I feel the same way about this gov't and the Harper years.
CO2 Emissions? Up. A lot. Indigenous reconciliation? Nope. Clean water to all reserves? Nope. And what they have accomplished (small carbon taxes, subsidized daycare) seems very vulnerable to immediate reversal on day one of a conservative gov't.
While Canada certainly has problems, I think it's important to remember that while things can certainly be better, that doesn't mean things are bad. The Rogers incident, for instance. It would be better if the incident didn't happen, but is really not worth being angry over. In the U.S., people seem to have forgotten this and began to get angry over why things weren't "better" even though things were really good. This divided the country, allowed a large percentage of the population to be controlled by outrage, and the aftermath is playing out right before our eyes. Before getting angry, try to identify all the things you have to be grateful for.
But we have -- since before our confederation -- been dominated by insular and mediocre monopoly interests. From the Northwest and Hudson's Bay Company to Rogers and Bell. From the Family Compact to the insular board rooms of Calgary's oil sector or Bay Street. A set of local self-connected classes that circle around the same elite private schools and family parties.
Yes, our health care system has advantages over the US. But it's a system heavily rationed and under crisis because of waves of abuse and a lack of will to reform. I've been waiting since February for an MRI for a knee injury I got skiing, and I only haven't ducked south to Buffalo to get it done in the US because I didn't have money coming in until recently.
That's a minor inconvenience though compared to the state of our emergency rooms right now.
I'm passionate about these issues because I think Canada can be way better, especially if the point of comparison is not the US as a whole; but individual states or various western European countries (esp Scandinavia)
I think most people would be better served to recognize that their sphere of influence is a lot more local than their social media voices would lead them to believe. Being a positive influence for your family, friends and coworkers has far more consequential effects than some cheap tweet that somehow went viral 3 years ago and only added well-stated validation to an issue supported by people who already made up their minds.
Politics might become ground into the dirt, but it’s always been strong relationships that hold together the social fabric and prevent radicalization.
I don't like or agree with affirmative action as a policy. It's slapping a bandaid on the problem without addressing root causes. It's demeaning to the people selected, and it's discrimination on constitutionally protected grounds of gender, race, sexual identity, etc.
If this is an indicator, how long has the U.S. political system been failing? John Adams was the second President starting in 1797. His son became the sixth President in 1825.
Also arguably the US's republican model has had some of the weakest "democratic" aspects. Its popular veneration of the President as a martial pseudo-king "Command in Chief" (very weird to watch from up here in Canada, BTW, esp during the Bush post-9/11 years), its blatant blurring of church & state, its obsession with its military, its overt and obsequious patriotism and national chauvinism, its expanding federal powers, its imperial ambitions (both internal to the Americas and then even further abroad after WWII), its history with slavery and racial discrimination, etc.
It's a contradictory country. On one hand having some of the most radical and egalitarian motive forces, and being earlier to the democratic impulse than most of the west. On the other hand having ossified authoritarian impulses built deep into its system.
I think you'll find more healthy democracies in western Europe and Canada, though they don't have the same radical liberal (small, classical l) ideological underpinnings.
Adams, Harrison, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Bush, Clinton. That spans the entire history of the country, and doesn't leave much room for cycles. I can't think of any period when inherited wealth and connections weren't extremely helpful in a political career.
I'd say that "ossified authoritarian impulses built deep into [the] system" is a global issue, not a uniquely American one.
A better answer is that contemporaneous class systems elsewhere in the world were so rigid, early in American history, that merely not having formal orders of nobility seemed shockingly egalitarian. Two and a half centuries later we're less eager to pat ourselves on the back for somewhat-better-but-only-somewhat levels of equality. But failure to make enough progress is not the same as regression.
But to stay on topic, I believe it was Churchill that said democracy was the absolute worst form of government. Except for all the others.
I also disagree with you about Trudeau, almost to the point I would characterize your description of him as false. He started in the HoC 15 years ago, took that to a leadership position in a failing Liberal party and revitalized them. I think it's more problematic that Harper led a lobbying group for several years.. I am curious what you think has been disastrous? (never mind, I see your sibling comment) I think he is actually impressively aware of the political coordination with the American and Canadian right-wings.
If I'm understanding you right, it's more of a problem with machine politics, and I'd agree with you. The solution has always been restrictions on donations, advertising, and otherwise limiting the influence of money on politics but that fight has mostly failed.
My point remains regardless: it is corrosive to democracy to let power consolidate in family power centres. Many kings and emperors of antiquity were very competent. And successful powerful families cultivated competency at ruling through elite education and patronage etc. But it was still a terrible form of government. Not the least because it becomes self-serving over time, but also because of its injustice: all the very competent people passed over because they did not have the right name or connections.
Having a healthy democracy (literally: "people's rule") requires us to explicitly counteract concentration of power in lineage systems, party bureaucracies, and corporate dominance. Of these family lineage is one of the easiest to spot.
Yes, we've always had this. No, it's not a good thing. And we need to actively counteract it, even if it means passing up very competent individuals.
I liked Herbert's books, I don't want to live in the Dune universe :-)
I would probably have a slightly different nuance to my interpretation of the nature of power centers. I think that term limits counteract this pretty well for individual families and politicians. I'm more concerned about influence organizations and the individuals and families that fund them, like Heritage. They have enormous influence, don't disclose funding, and are completely unelected.
Also, in the last two centuries of the western Roman Empire there was a new emperor every decade or less. Short terms did nothing to stop the authoritarian and tyrannical (and dysfunctional) nature of that rule.
Sufficiently powerful individuals will make term limits disappear anyways. (See Putin, etc.)
Wanna know how the NDP blew the majority polls early in that election? Yep, it was Mulcair, who was anything but strong.
Politics in its modern form is often a full-time job. To climb the ladder often means one must start early, yet this job is anything but stable. Most regular families can't really afford the risk or downsides. Political dynasties have the advantage of existing connections, as well as inter-generational resources that aren't available in other families. In this video https://youtu.be/XqjQ6gqgi0w?t=41 you can see Trudeau Jr.'s behaviour was clearly groomed for attending public functions. This was a headstart that many others don't have when they go into politics well into adulthood. The same phenomenon is present in Japan, just at a much larger extent. Social connections is an asset without form, and naturally it can get passed down generations like other assets. Why abandon them when they can be used advance your career. Unless we adopt ancient Athenian procedures of ostracism, political dynasties will exist. And ostracism will not happen because it was idiotic and backfired badly.
Justin Trudeau had been a MP for 5 years when he became the Liberal leader. Their party was in crisis mode after a decade of consecutive seat losses. Trudeau was the button behind their "break in case of emergency" glass, and it worked for them because the same effect resonated with the voter base.
Modern politicians in developed elective democratic countries aren't benevolent despots, and no single person's brain has the capacity to process or react to everything going on in the world at this day and age. This means they have lots of advisors to handle most of that processing and decision suggestions. The relief of this burden means a good modern politican doesn't have to be good at policy - they become another type of influencer whose first and foremost focus is charisma. Zelensky is another example.
I don't think it should be surprising that politicians can have family members who also make a career in politics. The same thing happens with public figures like actors, musicians and sports people. But it also happens with doctors and lawyers and soldiers and police and bakers and plumbers and hair stylists.
Although there are plenty of people who grow up to do something different from their parents, there is definitely motivation to "follow in the footsteps". If nothing else, you can probably leverage a built-in support network.
The question that's important for democracy is if it's possible for someone to break in to a political system if they are not a member of a pre-existing dynasty. So far I think in most countries that is still the case. Certainly it's better than feudal times.
A much better example would be the Frei family, with both Eduardo Frei Montalva and his son, Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, having served as presidents and several other members having different political positions. Frei Montalva, by the way, preceded Salvador Allende.
But if you’re one of the exceedingly rare HNers who might enjoy “orchestral musical comedy” now that you know it exists, he’s worth a listen. This piece is more like sketch comedy than his others, so is more generally enjoyable even if you’re not an orchestral music nerd. https://youtu.be/MzXoVo16pTg
Of course stuff like connections, name recognition, favors and backroom deals are a thing as well which are various levels of bad and preventable.
That claim was why the Athenians - rightly - called Socrates an idiot. One who didn't understand the point of protecting his interest through participating in politics.
A politician isn't supposed to administrate, he's supposed to represent people's interests - those who elected him in our system. He doesn't pilot the ship, he says where the ship should go in the first place. To the degree mere competence is required, he can hire someone to help him.
When family dynasties happen in politics, it's doubly a bad sign. First, there's no reason to think the son of a representative is accurately representative just because the father was. There's always the risk that he could be advancing private interests at the expense of the public he represents. And second: that the son is even there, is itself evidence that the father may have done just that, advancing his family interest over the public's.
Michael Jordan's sons didn't play professional basketball. For elite sports, having an elite athlete parent has low predictive power.
Cherry picking some of the NBAs MVPs, you might not remember Dell Curry[0], but you probably know one or both(!) of his sons who play in the NBA. Or there's Joe Bryant[1] whose son eclipsed his career in the NBA.
Or, here's a fun sport switching family. Sometimes the athletic gene is so strong, four of the great-grandsons go pro.[2]
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_Curry [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Bryant [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatius_Gronkowski
Voting for relatives gives us presidents like Bush Jr.
After World War II, Kishi was imprisoned for three years as a suspected Class A war criminal. However, the U.S. government did not charge, try, or convict him, and eventually released him as they considered Kishi to be the best man to lead a post-war Japan in a pro-American direction. With U.S. support, he went on to consolidate the Japanese conservative camp against perceived threats from the Japan Socialist Party in the 1950s. Kishi was instrumental in the formation of the powerful Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) through a merger of smaller conservative parties in 1955, and thus is credited with being a key player in the initiation of the "1955 System", the extended period during which the LDP was the overwhelmingly dominant political party in Japan.[3][4]
As prime minister, Kishi's mishandling of the 1960 revision of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty led to the massive 1960 Anpo protests, which were the largest protests in Japan's modern history and which forced him to resign in disgrace.