Sometimes Mud Is Thicker Than Blood

Like good little warriors conscripted into battle, the sons and daughters of the nation’s political class are supposed to soldier on. They spend their toddler-hoods at campaign rallies, the occasional grade-school weekend stuffing envelopes. On election night, they gather around mom or dad, and with the bright lights of television tearing their eyes, they smile and nod, never betraying heartbreak and usually muting exultation.

And then a good portion of them grow up and, having been indoctrinated into the life, live it themselves.

The history books are full of them. John Adams’ presidency begat John Quincy Adams’, much as George Bush’s presidency could beget George W. Bush’s. Each generation, the Daleys of Chicago throw another Richard onto the Second City political pyre, much as the Browns of California throw their Edmunds and the Kennedys of Massachusetts their every member.

Some of them beg off, of course, as do the sons and daughters of plumbers and electricians and attorneys, having seen too much, too close. But the unwritten rules suggest doing so with a bit of deference, and a lot of silence.

So it came as something of a jolt when the inheritor of a potent California name recently opted out, not quietly but with a firm jab at the political body’s solar plexus.

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Katherine Feinstein, a 41-year-old deputy city attorney, turned aside suggestions that she run for San Francisco district attorney. As the daughter of U.S. Sen. Dianne told the San Francisco Chronicle: “It’s too much of a sacrifice to ask someone who cares about honesty and integrity and concrete accomplishments to jump into a cesspool and swim around for a year, and that’s what politics is these days.”

In truth, she said in an interview, her decision was far more nuanced. The “cesspool” she referred to is the particularly pungent one in her hometown of San Francisco, California’s most politically riotous city, where even boring elections engender almost farcical mayhem. She would have been running against a celebrated political battler, controversial incumbent Terence Hallinan.

She also worried about the impact of elective life--where only the naive believe that there are breathers between elections--on her 6-year-old daughter.

Having said all that, she said, she would have run had it not been for what she has learned in the life.

“It can seem very shiny and attractive on the outside looking in,” she said delicately. “I’m not sure it’s shiny and attractive on the inside looking out.”

In some ways, the children of politicians are like the rest of us in this post-Lewinsky world, only more so. They have seen politics in all its glory and, painfully, in its ruination. They can emerge either as political activists or throw in the towel with equal vehemence--roughly approximating the disparate reactions seen nationally in the wake of the presidential scandals.

Katherine’s alter ego, as it were, is the son of the other California senator. Doug Boxer, son of U.S. Sen. Barbara, is contemplating a run for a Marin County Assembly seat. He is well aware that the blessings of political inheritance--name identification and a fat Rolodex of potential donors--can be undercut by the other edge of the sword.

“The downsides are that people will expect that you have a certain philosophy and that people don’t think you have a brain. They think the only reason you are running is because of your parents’ name,” said Boxer. “You have to break out of who they think you are.”

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Like Doug Boxer, Katherine Feinstein has felt the yin and yang of politics for most of her life. In 1990, when her mother ran unsuccessfully for governor, Katherine was her near-constant shadow, notable for sweating the race nearly as much as the candidate herself. Running for office “is something I always thought I would do and something I never thought I would do,” she said.

When it came right down to it, however, her instincts fought against the entreaties. She insists that she wasn’t concerned about specific mud-spattering, but the larger matter of being, as she described it, “sullied in the process.”

“In San Francisco, I’ve pretty much been vetted,” she said. “So I don’t have the fear of a discovery. It’s just the process. The whole Clinton-Monica thing--the focus all on the negative rather than what [candidates] say they want to do and if they can do it.”

Political insiders were mortified at her denunciation of politics, if the blizzard of phone calls she received was any indication. But outsiders--or as she casually refers to them, “normal people”--swamped the critical calls 5 to 1.

One caller, who described herself as a fourth-generation San Franciscan, thanked Feinstein for “calling it what it is.”

“Thank you for standing up for being a lady,” the caller added.

Feinstein’s mother, who was lobbying for the race, is disappointed at the decision, Katherine said. Katherine herself is still unsure whether it was the right one, but she is coming to terms with it.

“Running for office involves such a sacrifice of privacy and normalcy,” she said. “I think I have come to believe that there are other ways to make a difference.”