Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Mudslinging, Money-Grubbing, and Mayhem
- 2 The Decision to Run for Office
- 3 Political Ambition in the Candidate Eligibility Pool
- 4 Barack Obama and 18 Million Cracks in the Glass Ceiling
- 5 You Could Be President Someday!
- 6 On-the-Job Training
- 7 You Think I Should Run for Office?
- 8 Biting the Bullet
- 9 Future Patterns of Candidate Emergence and Studies of Political Ambition
- Appendix A The Citizen Political Ambition Panel Study
- Appendix B The First Wave Survey (2001)
- Appendix C The Second Wave Survey (2008)
- Appendix D The First Wave Interview Questionnaire
- Appendix E The Second Wave Interview Questionnaire
- Appendix F Coding of Variables
- Works Cited
- Index
- References
5 - You Could Be President Someday!
Early Socialization, the Role of Family, and Political Ambition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Mudslinging, Money-Grubbing, and Mayhem
- 2 The Decision to Run for Office
- 3 Political Ambition in the Candidate Eligibility Pool
- 4 Barack Obama and 18 Million Cracks in the Glass Ceiling
- 5 You Could Be President Someday!
- 6 On-the-Job Training
- 7 You Think I Should Run for Office?
- 8 Biting the Bullet
- 9 Future Patterns of Candidate Emergence and Studies of Political Ambition
- Appendix A The Citizen Political Ambition Panel Study
- Appendix B The First Wave Survey (2001)
- Appendix C The Second Wave Survey (2008)
- Appendix D The First Wave Interview Questionnaire
- Appendix E The Second Wave Interview Questionnaire
- Appendix F Coding of Variables
- Works Cited
- Index
- References
Summary
I’ve seen how a person can really have an impact on what's going on around you. You couldn't leave my dinner table without the sense that you had an obligation…to try to impact your world.…Eating was almost incidental to the discussion, whether it be my mother's teaching career or what was going on in our state or the nation or the world.
– Beau Biden, Attorney General of Delaware and son of Vice President Joe BidenWhen you are around politics, you realize there is nothing that special about being a politician or a policy maker. When you are in that environment, when you are younger and exposed to it, you look at it and say, “I could do that.”
– Lisa Murkowski, U.S. Senator and daughter of former Alaska Governor and U.S. Senator Frank MurkowskiAs a teenager and young adult…I knew there was this wonderful man in office and moving up higher who was concerned with the working person. And his grassroots ability was phenomenal. He knew a lot of people all over the state and that is what I intend to do in each of the 100 counties here in North Carolina.
– Kay Hagan, U.S. Senator and niece of former Florida Governor and U.S. Senator Lawton ChilesAlthough it may be rare to grow up in families as political as those of Beau Biden, Lisa Murkowski, or Kay Hagan, family dynamics play a substantial role in politics. We need to look no further than the typical campaign ad, website, or political acceptance or resignation speech for examples of politicians invoking the influence and importance of their families in their political decision making. Yet even though politicians rely on their families – in terms of the civic duty they attribute to their parents for instilling in them, and the support for which they regularly thank their spouses and children – we know little about whether and to what extent family dynamics systematically affect candidate emergence. After all, most of what we know about the role of family dynamics in politics yields from studies of candidates and elected officials, all of whom managed to enter the electoral arena, regardless of their family circumstances, structures, roles, and responsibilities.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Becoming a CandidatePolitical Ambition and the Decision to Run for Office, pp. 77 - 103Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011