Only the political class breeding itself

From The Way Things Are and How They Might Be by Tony Judt and Kristina Božič from several years ago.  

Courage is always missing in politicians. It is like saying basketball players aren’t normally short. It isn’t a useful attribute. To be morally courageous is to say something different, which reduces your chances of winning an election. Courage is in a funny way more common in an old-fashioned sort of enlightened dictatorship than it is in a democracy. However, there is another factor. My generation has been catastrophic. I was born in 1948 so I am more or less the same age as George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Gerhard Schröder, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – a pretty crappy generation, when you come to think of it, and many names could be added. It is a generation that grew up in the 1960s in Western Europe or in America, in a world of no hard choices, neither economic nor political. There were no wars they had to fight. They did not have to fight in the Vietnam War. They grew up believing that no matter what choice they made, there would be no disastrous consequences. The result is that whatever the differences of appearance, style and personality, these are people for whom making an unpopular choice is very hard.

[snip]

We have had six, seven generations of leaders who came to power exclusively by political manoeuvring, which is historically very unusual. It’s like inbreeding: there are no external inputs, no new kinds of people, only the political class breeding itself. 

Judt was a self-described social democrat with early Marxist roots.  So it is interesting to note that this was written in March 25th, 2010, long preceding Trump.  A man accustomed to hard trade-off choices (from his business life) and a man with courage to challenge Judt's "crappy generation" of leaders.  

It is clear that the left has also become the staunch defender of the statist status quo and has fought tooth and nail against the reformer seeking to reestablish the Classical Liberal order undermined by the George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Gerhard Schröder, Tony Blair and Gordon Browns of Judt's generation.  

I am overstating the argument for emphasis but I think it makes the point.  Judt was firmly of the "crappy generation" and his criticism has turned out to effectively have been a criticism of his own people.