Hi Mike,

>Clinton aristocracy? Are you sure about that?

depends a lot of the definition of aritocracy, for sure.

I did not mean it as a literal translation from the greek original "leadership by the best".
Consanguinity often found in aristocracit/heriditic leadership changes clearly does not enter here,
but mostly old egypt was so focused on bloodline that they encouraged incest in Pharaos,
IMHO because of assumed connection to the gods influencing flood and weather.

Later you had sometimes adopted children ruling (by some said to be even better than Augustus golden times)
but that was coming from a mostly patrician controlled democracy.

As political office needs money in the US, the population to consider is not the whole US population,
but for the highest office in the states you had since the beginning of the end of the eigthies:
Bush senior, Clinton male, Bush junior and the closest contender for last dem candidacy was Clinton female ?
Who then gets a very high office in the Obama gov ?

With the Kennedies Bobby would have reaped the sympathies of John's assasination,
but still the Kennedy clan was into politics with all brothers already before John was elected.

That at the very beginning of the states the son of a former prez was elected later IMHO was not as disturbing
as the trend shown in the last dozen years. Recognizable surname cannot count that much today ;-)
Another Bush son is/was Gov - Florida ? Not sure about that and too lazy to google.

It is neither a pure aristocratic mold, nor a patrician if seen from Roman standards,
and I realize that some families played a bigger role in american politics for long stretches.
But the candidates and the selection process for highest office *this century* have me worried a bit.
Even coming from a selected sub-group there should have been more variation.

Hope you had fun with the SB

regards

thomas