The future of American Royalty

About the Grand-Dukes and princesses of the United States

Uncle Edward Kennedy and his niece, the crown princess Carolyn of the United States of America came in the news briefly after one another. Edward Kennedy underwent a very serious brain surgery, and Carolyn Kennedy became visible as one of three top-advisers appointed by Obama to help him find a suitable candidate for the vice-presidency. A remarkable fact in itself.


One step removed from becoming Obama's running mate - Carolyn Kennedy

But then I was thinking. Will they remain unique, the Kennedys? Or is there the prospect of a lasting American Royalty, a true American nobility in the classical sense, with young lady Chelsea Clinton to follow - and so on? One could also think of the ‘royalty’ of Hollywood, of which quite a few members combine movie work with political activism, up to and including the governorship of California. The memory of Ronald Reagan can still stand out as their great example.


Next in line for the Clinton's - their daughter Chelsea

And even without using the comparison with old age or “ancien regime” distinctions of royalty and nobility, on can still ask the question: what exactly is the nature and identity of the – present – American elite?

I am posing this question, one could say, for a very personal reason too. For I have been brought up with an absolute certainty about the nature and identity of the American elite as it existed some thirty to forty years ago.

I could not have had a better example of American history and civilization then the person of my American grandmother, who also had the name of Carolyn. At old age she would be greeted everywhere by everybody as if she were a grand old queen.


The Pilgrim Fathers arriving at Plymouth, MA, 1620 - the birthplace of the early New England elite

However, my grandmother was all but royal. She was brought up, in the 1890s and early 1900s, with a total disgust for hereditary nonsense and with a great sense of republicanism. She was the daughter of a long line of Americans, starting at the very beginning, on the shores of New England. In 1620 one of her forebears landed near Cape Cod with the company of the ship “The Mayflower”, who later became known as The Pilgrim Fathers. “We have Mayflower blue blood”, my father often said jokingly. Nonsense, of course. Over a million people - if not more - can trace their origins back to the ealry settlers of America.

The Bush dynasty (lasting or only temporary?) - George W.'s daughter Jenna at her marriage

One of my grandmother’s great-great-great-grand-mothers was hanged in Boston – around 1660 - for speaking up her mind about the rigid theocracy of New England’s Governor Winthrop. Her name was Mary Dyer, and her statue can still be seen in Boston. She left some six children and a husband.

The principle of self-government and of the irrelevance of religion in public life thus became the very foundation of my grandmother’s American upbringing before she arrived in Holland in 1920, aged 30 (where she would live as a grand lady of Amsterdam for all her remaining 65 years).

But when I sense the current sentiments and ‘trends’ in the United States, I can see that the present elite is quite different from the ‘pure’ New England and US elite of the 1890s and early 1900s as I remember it. Indeed Hollywood today is very much at the forefront, as are politicians who have Hollywood qualities. For my grandmother, only true merits, not the cosmetics, counted. Yet she also had the sense of the imaginative, and of experimentation. My memory of her generation and the aristocracy she represented is of great dedication, achievement and joy, but otherwise filled with no-nonsense and good common sense.

This is I always have perceived the United States and the character of the American elite. But I am afraid I am talking about an American sentiment that is now almost entirely extinct.


Hollywood royalty - Jennifer Lopez

Still there is air of a US royalty or nobility, often influenced – of course – by greater or lesser financial success, etcetera. – but – as in the case of the Kennedys – dynastic projections play a role too. It would truly be interesting to have a peek in the future of this family. And yes, perhaps even of Chelsea Clinton.

The most intriguing royalty at present, I believe, is the Princess of Massachusetts, Edward’s most likely successor, his niece Carolyn Kennedy. Obama has drawn her in just one step away from becoming his true running mate. If this is not a flirtation with royalty and succession in a classical sense! I am convinced that Obama is well aware of the pro’s and con’s of this ‘picture’.

The forthcoming Presidential election increasingly becomes one which draws us closer to a new historic watershed. But what and when it will be, we can not foretell at present. Perhaps not in another four years. And perhaps the moment is imminent.

The greatest challenge for the Presidential campaign

It may have been important for the electorate of the primaries to see the difference(s) between the shrinking number of remaining presidential candidates. I think there remains very little room for doubt as regards the differences between the last remaining two candidates. In almost all respects they are each other’s opposite.

In almost every respect the future will be progressively colored by the man who finally will emerge as the winner of this election.

Yet, at this stage, the differences are not what really matters. They are clear and everybody can make their own assessment of them. No further campaign to stress the many opposing views will be necessary.


Barack Obama

What seems paramount though is which of the two candidates can best be expected to create a bridge or create many bridges across the divides both inside America and in the international world. Not the difference, but achievement of consensus and reconciliation would be the greatest potential contribution of the next American President.



John McCain

Ironically, this is probably the only quality in which the candidates seem highly compatible. Both McCain and Obama are men of balanced nature. Both project a sense of reconciliation, each from his own vintage point.

Reconciliation is not just a point on the agenda of the President once he is in office. In my view, it will indeed be the candidate who already starts this process of crossing bridges during the campaign, who will win the Presidency.

Will us await a – final - US Empire?

The history of Rome most certainly can serve as the precedent most close to the origins and development of the ‘Washington Republic’, the United States of America.

In Europe, by and large, the Imperial stage preceded the Republican. In Rome it was the other way around. The Roman Empire succeeded the Roman Republic.

The Presidency of George W. Bush has brought the world closer to the image of a US Empire than any presidency before him. It is not simply by the present day US actions in many parts of world that one could reach such a verdict, but by the authoritarian way in which the policies have been conducted: with the greatest disinterest in the opinion of right minded people, and forgetting the most basic rules of a democracy.


America's great monument of Republicanism

What we should not forget, of course, is that the United States were born out of great disgust for imperial and uncompromising attitudes of the King of England and the whole system that he headed. And it is democracy and republicanism that the US tries to sell to (or enforce on) the rest of the world, not mere military authority - or so it is officially said.

But we could also ask the question whether the US should be some kind of exclusive inheritor of the Roman mantle in the first place. The US can not exist without Europe the way it is, and for Europe this is similarly true in respect of America.

Washington, Paris, Berlin, even Rome itself, all share in the legacy, one might argue.

Europe obviously has no interest in US Imperial tendencies. Far from it. But we have been very unwilling or incapable so far to offer our own alternative to a world driven into new imperialism. The project Europe is a project exactly against that.


The multi-faced leadership of Europe

I believe at this point many in Europe would interrupt, and say: but why do you think that the US isn’t an imperial state already, particularly if you include the mechanism of free markets of which the US are masters, if not the Master?

Of course we could seduce the American people into electing a new President who is most amenable to European interests. What could we – I mean Europe - promise the American people in return? In particular: what could we promise them as a solid alternative to protracting the Iraq and Afghanistan disasters? It is impossible to think of solid solutions if the US and Europe are not in it together, and leveling. This process of itself would also countervail tendencies towards imperialism within the US.


A great innovator of the world's popular music, Elvis Presley

Could the US, like the Romans in their time, say that they are the first great nation of its kind ever, even without political and military imperialism?

The US have become accustomed in the past century to accept all the attributes of a world leader, not just in political terms, but also in terms of innovation and cultural development. We only need to contemplate the figures of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Walt Disney, Louis Armstrong, and so many others to illustrate this point.


The US President who first took America across the bridge of world leadership

I have myself been raised with the great American example being omnipresent in my parents’ home, with our grandparents and with our relatives in the US. This is the US of which I am personally proud. And I certainly recognize the great influence of American inventiveness on our daily lives, everywhere in the world. In the movies we watch, in the mobile phones and laptops we use, in almost every aspect of our material and cultural world.


The instrument that has made the millions of us connect to the world, almost 24/7

But I can no longer be proud of a United States of America that leads the world on the basis of lies and pure self-interest. “Those who are not with me are against me!” Remember? One could say that these words were a blow to democracy, but perhaps even to genuine Republicanism itself. You always take a vote. You always listen to arguments.

But President George W. Bush refused to do so, and the British Prime Minister Tony Blair went on his knees for the President despite this. As the saying goes, Roosevelt and Churchill would have turned around in their graves.


The wrong single face of Europe?

There is one thing which most likely distinguishes the United States from the Roman world. There is always hope for the better. And there have always been leaders, at the right time, to help the Americans cross that bridge.

Are we at the verge of such a transition of leadership? I am careful not to be too hopeful in this respect. I wouldn't like another disappointment, such as in 2000 and again in 2004. Perhaps we should still bide our time for another four years and endure protracted opportunism and discontent, driven not by the people, or their representatives, but by the directors of America’s big multinational corporations. For if anything imperial can still arise, especially out of the US, it is not the Presidency, it is Corporatism (not dissimilar to the struggle within ourselves: between the consumer and the citizen).

Perhaps to regain control over corporations and their standards across the world, is one of the greatest challenges of the next US President. If may be preferable, actually, if a Republican does that job, not a Democrat. But in terms of public leadership it is very much possible that the immediate, strongest prospect is offered at the latter's side of America’s political fence.

Perhaps the lesson is that, whether or not the history of Rome has anything to say to the present American world, nothing that we hold self-evident today, is necessarily self-evident tomorrow. History can ebb and flow in many different, unsuspected ways. But that the decision of the American people in the forthcoming five months is a very crucial decision too for a great many people across the world and the course of this new century.