(The Week - April 1) - The prospect of a 2016 race between Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton understandably fills our commentators with existential despair.
It doesn't look good for a democracy, especially one that prides itself on its equal opportunity and meritocracy, to have the wife of a former president run against the brother and son of a former president. It looks more like a scenario out of a banana republic than the great United States of America.
At least that's what I think on most days.
But on some days...
On some days, I think back on Athens, the Roman Republic, Venice, and 19th century Great Britain, and realize that all of the West's most successful empires were aristocratic and plutocratic republics.
Maybe a country of the size, complexity, and power of the United States can't be a democracy.
Maybe a country of the size, complexity, and power of the United States shouldn't be a democracy.
And, after all, the U.S. is clearly moving beyond democracy on its own power. An ineffective legislature, a power-grabbing executive, a strong state, a Praetorian guard — all of this is looking very late Roman Republic. Maybe a line of succession would just make things official. And Rome still had a couple more centuries of greatness ahead of it after its turn to caesarism.
Maybe Jeb Bush isn't the man America needs in spite of his last name. Maybe he's the man America needs because of his last name. Read more.
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