Imagine a world in which American presidential elections since 1988 go like this: Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Bush, Obama, Obama, Clinton, Clinton, Bush, Bush, Obama, Obama, Clinton, Clinton. It could happen. On Monday, Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, announced that she would consider running for office. “Right now,” she told NBC’s Today, “I’m grateful to live in a city and a state and a country where I strongly support my mayor, my governor, my president and my senators and my representative. If at some point that weren’t true and I thought I could make a meaningful and measurably greater impact, you know, I’d have to ask and answer that question.”
Family regimes used to be considered taboo. Aside from John Adams and John Quincy Adams, no two presidents were related until the 20th century, when Teddy Roosevelt and his distant relative FDR were elected. Then, with the Kennedy family, the tide began to turn. Now, political families are all the rage, from the Bushes to the Clintons to the Obamas (Michelle will likely run for Senate from Illinois in the coming years, despite her protestations to the contrary).
Lately, Chelsea has been making the rounds, hosting panels for the Clinton Global Initiative and doing high-profile magazine spreads. No doubt part of that is her mother’s upcoming 2016 presidential run. But in an age where Americans seem to be searching for royal families, Chelsea represents the next generation.
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).
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