The BC Era?

Stunningly, 40% of Americans have never lived when there wasn't a Bush or a Clinton in the White House.

Damn, that's a hell of a statistic.

I had no idea that almost half our population is under 20. If you add the years Bush 41 was Reagan's veep and the potential two terms Hillary may be able to add, you're looking at almost four decades of reign between two families. While historical, talk of Bush-Clinton fatigue is increasingly cropping up in the national political debate. It sounds like something you get after using a treadmill.

The closest comparisons in terms of political dominance are the father-son presidencies of John Adams and John Quincy Adams, whose single terms were separated by 24 years, and the presidencies of fifth cousins Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt, whose collective 20 years as president were separated by a more than their time in office.

"We now have a younger generation and middle-age generation who are going to think about national politics through the Bush-Clinton prism," said Princeton University political historian Julian Zelizer. "It's not just that we've heard their names a lot, but we've had a lot of problems with their names."

So does a nation of 300 million-plus people really have only two families qualified to run it? Are the 116 million Americans who have never known a time when there wasn't a Bush or Clinton in the White House as either president or vice president satisfied?

The Clintons and Bushes have built up strong "brand" recognition for their names, just as the Kennedys did, and therefore making it harder for newcomers to compete. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll taken over the summer found that 25% of all Americans said that the prospect of having at least 24 straight years of a President Clinton or Bush would be a consideration in their vote for president in 2008.

Whatever the poll results may be, I hope there's no Jeb component in the years to come. I pray 2009 marks the last Bush in the oval office.