ARTICLE: McCain and Clinton Win in N.H. In Major Comebacks, By Chris Cillizza, washingtonpost.com, January 8th, 2008

I will admit I am depressed a bit about Hillary's win in NH. I admire her a lot and think she could be a great president, but here's the speech line that killed any enthusiasm for that scenario (from memory): "It took a Clinton to clean up after the first Bush and it looks like it'll take another Clinton to clean up after the second one.").

That line just drove home the whole dynasty shtick that I've grown so weary of. If it's bad for backward countries to elect spouses and kids of former rulers, then why is it such a good deal here?

I mean, are we that bereft of talent that we must regurgitate entire administrations? Look at what the "steady hands" of Bush 41 (Powell, Rice, Cheney, Wolfowitz) got us with Bush 43.

All this tells me is that politics doesn't matter much today in the everyday lives of Americans. We're just dogs going back to our own vomit. Instead of the Big Man, we submit to the Big Family. Same mediocre deal, because they second-timers rule with a sense of entitlement. We saw it with W.'s supremely arrogant crowd and I suspect we'd see it with all the Clintonites back in power: tons of "we know best."

That's just why I'm so desperate for the Boomers/Vietnam crowd to pass. I want politics to stop being such a "low" profession that only the weirdly driven types enter into it, leading us to rely on dynastic families as political "comfort food."