Another American election has come and gone, this one noteworthy for its complete absence of candidates from America’s richest, most famous family dynasties. As far as I can tell, names with an Old Money, Social Register flavor”€”Rockefellers, Mellons, Fords, Astors, Vanderbilts, Morgans, Amours, Stanfords, Carnegies, and the du Ponts”€”are a rarity in today’s political landscape. Yes, the last half-century has seen three Rockefellers (Winthrop, Nelson, and Jay) and two generations of Bushes plus a few Kennedys, but this stream is all but dry.

The absence of these names is hardly trivial. The Founders feared the political consequences of powerful, rich families, even in the absence of aristocratic titles. The Constitution recognized this possibility when it authorized hoi polloi-dominated state legislatures to choose Senators rather than direct election where only the richest, most powerful could win an expensive statewide election. The Electoral College centered on states, not the popular vote, likewise insulated the Republic from influential dynastic families (e.g., the Adamses of Massachusetts, the Livingstons and Van Rensselaers of New York) that might dominate a particular state or region but not the entire nation.

The retreat of prominent families from civic life is a complicated story, but let me suggest one critical but often neglected explanation: the salutary role of bimbos (also known as tarts, floozies, vamps, and more recently, Natashas). In a nutshell, as these gorgeous and typically empty-headed women marry into rich families, the family’s genetic stock declines. With this decline, public careers for offspring slip beyond reach. Yes, the descendants of John Jacob Astor or Commodore Vanderbilt still enjoy money and power, but this is not power over the public realm. The Republic has been saved.

Understanding the bimbo’s contribution requires a quick biology lesson. The founding males of the great financial empires were undoubtedly men of immense intelligence, a large portion of which resided in their genes. Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, and the like were “outliers,” probably three standard deviations or more above the IQ mean.

These men passed both a financial and biological legacy to their children. The financial portion was enormous. The biological portion was also substantial, but their progeny undoubtedly slipped a bit when it came to brains, since extreme traits such as extraordinary intelligence seldom persist across generations. The familiar parallel is exceptionally tall parents having tall children who are rarely as tall as their very tall parents.

This second generation was, nevertheless, sufficiently smart to sustain the empire (think Lawrence Rockefeller, Henry Ford II). It is at this junction of the genetic saga that bimboism appears and critically alters history. Unlike the patriarch, the second-generation male lacks any incentive to marry for brains since a smart wife is not an asset. The upshot is that these hyper-rich men often became enamored of bimbos (i.e., the gold diggers, trophy wives), marry them, and sire a rather ordinary third generation.