Presidential Politics, and the Numbers
--Gary Tuchman, 360 CorrespondentTwenty years ago this week, when I worked for a local station in West Palm Beach, I interviewed George Herbert Walker Bush for my first time. He was in his second term as Ronald Reagan's Vice President, getting ready for the 1988 Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary as he sought the GOP presidential nomination.
An unpredictable and unprecedented era was set off by Mr. Bush's White House victory. Since that win two decades ago, we have only had two families in the White House.
The last five terms read like the name of a law firm: Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, and Bush. And if Hillary Clinton is lucky enough to win two terms, that "firm's" name would be Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Bush, Clinton and Clinton. If that happens, there will be 28 consecutive years of the same two families in the Oval Office.
But if you include the senior Bush's eight years as Vice President, that would be 36 years, which means that the two familes would have one of the two highest offices in the land for 15 percent of the entire history of the United States! (That's 36 Bush and Clinton years divided by the age of the U.S., if Hillary completes a second term, which would be 240.) And who knows if Jeb might want to go for broke one day!
The purpose of my political-mathematical exercise is not to infer this is bad, good, or neutral. I think it's just interesting and ironic this is happening in a nation whose origins include shaking off the yoke of royal family rule.
