Way back in the mists of time I had an exchange on Marginal Revolution with Steve Sailer, regarding the book The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility. I pointed out the phenomenon of surname drift as an obvious counter to what Clark appeared to be arguing. Surname drift is how last names die out and slowly the number of last names diminish. Given enough time an isolated population would end up with everyone having the same last name. It’s just simple math.

Sailer got cross with me as he is a bit of genetic determinist and Clark’s book fits nicely into that belief. He’s not alone. John Derbyshire is a determinist, as well. In all honesty, I’m far closer to that view of human biology than most, but I think serendipity plays a much larger role than most of these guys would allow. Bill Gates was the son of bright parents. There were millions of coin flips by others, whose outcome shaped his life, between conception and his days stealing code out of dumpsters.

I thought about that when reading this from Derb the other day. I suspect we will hear a lot of sensible people discount the dynasty complaints with regards to Jeb. Derb was born and raised into a monarchy so I guess he can be forgiven with thinking such arrangements are sensible. I suspect many Americans will accept these arguments and dutifully vote for Bush in the primary and general election. I give Jeb a better than 50% chance of winning the nomination. Derb’s argument rests on this:

I write with feeling there, as a person hopeless at practical politics. If there is a PQ analogous to IQ, I’m down in the bottom decile. In my years working at corporate offices, I never had a clue who was up and who down. When X was suddenly fired or Y given a sudden dazzling promotion, I was always flabbergasted: “I had no idea …!” My colleagues would respond with a roll of the eyes: “Oh, Derb. Try to keep up, please …”

It is reasonable to suppose that this skill, or lack of skill, is rooted in the contours of the individual human personality. Now, most of the features that define personality are heritable, often highly so. (The paper at that link gives heritability for the “big five” core personality traits as: Extraversion 0.86, Openness 0.92, Neuroticism 0.59, Agreeableness 0.85, Conscientiousness 0.81.) We should therefore expect political skill to travel in families, like freckles or hairy elbows.

Presumably nature gets some reinforcement from nurture, too. Evelyn Waugh remarked somewhere that most men are best suited to the work their fathers did.

It seems to me that history argues against this line of thought. The line of Ida had a very good run, but many in his line were inept, crazy or deranged. The Julio-Claudian line was a train wreck. These are the two most successful family dynasties in the Occident and we see it as hit and miss, as far as hereditary leaders. Medieval Europe has a lot of hilariously insane rulers who came to power merely by their having won the lucky sperm contest, so the results can be quite dreadful.

The Founders certainly had a dim view of political dynasties. They had that in mind when designing the national government. They wanted the best and brightest to be attracted to state and local government, not the national government. This was, in part, to make political dynasties difficult to establish. A look through the biographies of the Founders say they knew a thing or two about the children of powerful men turning out to be nitwits, so they thought about it a lot.

There is an old time expression that goes, “shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations.” The first generation builds the family fortune, starting from the working class. The next generation does its best to maintain it, but mostly lives off the fruits of the father. The third generation blows through what’s left and ends up back in the same level as the founding generation. The Kennedy family is a good example.

I think the children of the king probably do, on average, possess more of the magic stuff that makes for a good king than most children. I also think they have precisely the wrong environment to cultivate that magic stuff. Poppy Bush served in WW2 and almost died in the Pacific. In other words, as a young man he had to cultivate his leadership assets under duress. His kids cultivated their assets getting drunk and chasing tail at elite preparatory schools. Seeds amongst the stones.

That said, any argument against Jeb Bush will find a friendly reception from me. If I were a religious man, I could be convinced that he is the Anti-Christ, heralding the end times. But that’s just me.