{"id":2212,"date":"2007-08-08T12:16:49","date_gmt":"2007-08-08T16:16:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2007\/08\/toward_an_ameri\/"},"modified":"2007-08-08T12:16:49","modified_gmt":"2007-08-08T16:16:49","slug":"toward_an_ameri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2007\/08\/toward_an_ameri\/","title":{"rendered":"Toward An American Oligarchy"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m interested by this question in the latest Wall Street Journal\/NBC poll<\/a>:<\/p>\n

If Hillary Clinton was elected president, some people say this would be a problem because it would mean at least twenty-four years of having a member of the Clinton family or the Bush family as president. Is this a serious consideration for you in voting for president, one of many considerations, not much of a consideration, or not a consideration for you at all?
\nSerious consideration …………………12
\nOne of many considerations ………….13
\nNot much of a consideration ………….20
\nNot a consideration at all ……………..54
\nNot sure ………………………………..1<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m among the 12% that thinks this is a “serious consideration”–so much so that this is one of the reasons I’ve been unexcited about the Clinton candidacy.
\nI don’t have anything against Ms. Clinton per se<\/em>. She seems like a well-qualified candidate whose policy positions are largely in line with my own. Undoubtedly I would vote for her in the general election.
\nBut as I envision a Clinton presidency, there’s several unappealing images that keep coming up. Among them:
\n(1) The media circus<\/u>. Imagine the press free-for-all with Bill and Hillary back in the White House. I don’t have any confidence that the press corps could control themselves from doing trite and personal stories. It would be four years of cleavagesque chatter.
\n(2) Right wing attack machine<\/u>. It’s true that rightists will assail any Democratic president. But I suspect their attacks would be even more ferocious against Ms. Clinton. She’s a divisive target, and they’ve got 15 years worth of history to dig up.
\n(3) Same old insiders<\/u>. I don’t know who would run the machinery in a Clinton White House, but I’m sure there would be many of the same faces as Clinton I. Do we really want the same small group of people running the country? How about some diversity in perspective?
\nBottom line: in a nation of 300 million, I just don’t understand why we’ve continued to turn to the same families to run the executive branch. There’s many capable leaders out there. We need fresh blood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m interested by this question in the latest Wall Street Journal\/NBC poll: If Hillary Clinton was elected president, some people say this would be a problem because it would mean at least twenty-four years of having a member of the Clinton family or the Bush family as president. Is this a serious consideration for you […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2212","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}