Where a couple of dominant families often run everything for generations
by Larry Sabato (excerpt)

REAL CLEAR POLITICS

The population of the United States now exceeds 300 million, and the talent pool of the world's only superpower is deep and rich.

How is it that the country is on the verge of filling its highest office for the sixth consecutive term from one of two families? That every President from 1989 to 2017 may be a Bush or a Clinton is a national disgrace. What has happened to the American Republic? How does it differ from a banana republic--where a couple of dominant families often run everything for generations?

Have we driven the vast majority of the potentially best Presidents out of the contest because of the high personal and professional costs of running for office? Are we the voters responsible because we are too lazy to go beyond the simplistic attractions of familiarity and high name identification? Or, most disturbing of all, has our political system become ossified, so that we are too fearful of change to seek out the most outstanding leaders among us for the toughest job in the world?

We don't pretend to have the answers. But we are shocked and dismayed that more people aren't even bothering to ask the questions.

-Dr. Sabato, the Robert Kent Gooch Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, founded the Center for Politics in 1998.