Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Ross Douthat Doesn't Like Dynasty Either

And he expresses his distaste with much better writing. Having quoted Ruth Marcus' WaPo column, Douthat writes,
This is, of course, a pretty good distillation of the case against dynastic politics: Namely, that it transforms the business of republican self-government into a soap opera...This sort of politics is entertaining to write about, which is one reason why fantasy sagas and Shakespeare are generally more interesting than Washington novels. But after twenty years with the same two families in the White House - which nearly became twenty-four (or twenty-eight) - for a political columnist to endorse a pointless escalation of dynastic politics because it fulfills the fairy-tale mythos her generation spun around a mediocre, tragically-murdered President and his good-looking family isn't "girly"; it's an embarrassment.


On a complete tangent, I thought George R.R. Martin's Ice and Fire novels were pretty marginal. And a big contributor to their mediocrity was, in my opinion, their focus on politics, which I found superficial and unconvincing. But like I say, that's a complete tangent.

(h/t Instapundit)