What's best for the Democracy?

I've been watching the presidential primaries with only a mild interest so far. The horserace coverage of primaries is not of interest to me for the most part - especially now that I'm a registered Independent.

But today I stumbled upon two N.Y. Times editorials that very much encapsulate what has been bouncing around my head this season. In particular, the second piece, is of great concern to me. Pretty nifty to find these things in the paper and shareable. Curious what the flist thinks...I know there are a ton of Obama fans out there...


THE KENNEDY MYSTIQUE:

Something fundamental has shifted in the Democratic Party.

...A throng of Kennedys came to the Bender Arena at American University in Washington to endorse Obama. ...The audience at American University roared. It was mostly young people, and to them, the Clintons are as old as the Trumans were in 1960. And in the students’ rapture for Kennedy’s message, you began to see the folding over of generations, the service generation of John and Robert Kennedy united with the service generation of the One Campaign. The grandparents and children united against the parents.

THE DYNASTIC QUESTION:

Does it diminish American democracy if we keep the presidency in the same two families that have held it since 1989?

...We Americans snicker patronizingly as “democratic” Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Singapore, India and Argentina hand over power to a wife or child of a former leader. Yet I can’t find any example of even the most rinky-dink “democracy” confining power continuously for seven terms over 28 years to four people from two families. (And that’s not counting George H.W. Bush’s eight years as vice president.)

...Yet we have faced this trade-off frequently over the last 215 years and regularly inclined on the side of fresh blood.

...As Thomas Jefferson put it: “in no office can rotation be more expedient” than in the presidency.