Each of these offerings converge on several key arguments. Foremost among them is the portrayal of Trump as not just a disruptive force but as a fundamental threat to the Republican Party’s core values and traditions. The authors long for a return to the policies and ethos of the Bush years — a combination of hawkish foreign policy, tax cuts, and socially conservative stances, such as opposition to abortion. More potent than this, however, is their united willingness to overlook a crucial aspect of Trump’s presidency: the fact that his governance was largely in line with conventional Republican policies. Trump’s administration was marked by significant achievements that resonated with the party’s base, such as the appointment of Supreme Court justices instrumental in overturning Roe v. Wade.

Having read them all, I can safely say that Cheney’s contribution stands as the archetype of the Never Trump genre. The book reflects what Cheney views as her divine right to hold a prominent role within the Republican Party. Her upbringing and lineage positioned her as a key figure in Washington, and Oath and Honor is an echo of this predetermined significance.

As befitting a modern-day Moses, Cheney’s tone is notably dramatic, characterised by an oscillation between exaggerated indignation and heavy-handed moralising. Its opening lines set a grandiose stage: “This is the story of the moment when American democracy began to unravel,” she warns. Cheney, or more likely her ghostwriter, thereafter embarks on a journey that paints a dire picture of the Trump era, framing everything in the context of America’s “unravelling”.

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Beneath the surface of this dramatic narrative lies a more personal story of jealousy and resentment. In Republican Rescue, a Never-Trump memoir by Chris Christie published way back in 2021, the former Governor of New Jersey makes a point of describing his initial positive working relationship with Trump. Similarly, Hutchinson’s Enough includes detailed friendly accounts of her interactions with her future Republican opponents. These narratives, at their core, are tales of friendships that deteriorated in the turbulent waters of Trump’s presidency. What makes Cheney’s stand out, however, is the way she seemingly fell out with everyone of note in the GOP.

Yet in every volume, the emphasis on the personal comes at the expense of a more comprehensive and objective analysis of the broader political implications of Trump’s presidency. In essence, these books, particularly Oath and Honor, aren’t genuine political critiques; they are instead historically valuable reflections of personal disillusionment and the fracturing of long-standing relationships within the Republican Party, much like records of the American Whig infighting that preceded the creation of the Republican Party in 1854.

In this light, Cheney’s contribution is best understood as a culmination of a personal vendetta against both Trump and a party whose direction she has never been able to grasp. Once a prominent figure in the party and vice-chair of the House January 6 Committee, she has since found herself increasingly alienated. Her resounding defeat in the 2022 Wyoming Primary by Trump-endorsed Harriet Hageman marked not only the end of her tenure in the House but also symbolised the party’s definitive shift away from the Cheney brand of neoconservatism.

This becomes apparent in her descriptions of encounters with individuals such as Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, whom she criticises for not tempering Trump’s actions: “I had met both Jared Kushner and his wife, Ivanka, several times… they should have done more to stop him.” Yet Cheney’s criticisms extend beyond individual anecdotes into a broader indictment of the party’s direction. She labels the transformed GOP as the “anti-Constitution party”, a dangerous departure from the party’s traditional values in favour of a movement she deems dangerous and anti-democratic. At the heart of this is a more prosaic truth: today’s GOP is simply an anti-Cheney party.

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Elsewhere, her arguments fail to address the complexities of the political landscape. She speaks of the millions of Americans who believe in election fraud narratives — warning that the GOP is on the brink of becoming a “party of QAnon” — yet fails to explore the reasons behind such beliefs. Indeed, the book is marked by its lack of consideration for context, even when it concerns her own political convictions. For instance, she conveniently omits her previous support for most of Trump’s policies, particularly during his first impeachment. She also suggests that the Democrats’ failure to subpoena John Bolton was a key factor in her opposition to that Russiagate-related impeachment, even though she didn’t give this explanation at the time; like the rest of the Republican leadership with whom she had yet to fall out of favour, she was content to call it a “sham” and a “waste of time”.

The result is that Oath and Honor is less a patriotic defence of American values than a tragedy of personal ambition. Along with every other book in the Never Trump genre, if it is to serve any function, it is as a chronicle of a tumultuous period in a Republican Party marked by ideological shifts and broken alliances. These are records of a messy and very public divorce, not just between a country and its president, but also between that president and some of his former allies. With her fondness for overblown rhetoric and love of Abraham Lincoln, Liz Cheney might even go so far as to claim they could constitute valuable last testaments in advance of a future civil war.

It’s also a tradition that extends beyond the halls of government. Members of famous political families who don’t run for office still tend to crop up in other influential positions: the upper tiers of journalism, or the media or the arts. Jenna Bush Hager, one of George W.’s daughters, has, since 2009, been an anchor for NBC — which counted Chelsea Clinton among its special correspondents between 2011 and 2014. In 2017, Malia Obama interned at The Weinstein Company. Even the also-rans bestow a certain kind of dazzle on their children: Meghan McCain, daughter of the John, who lost out to Malia’s dad, has had a prolific career as a TV host.

And historically, Americans have always been fairly fine with this — we keep voting them in and watching their shows and buying their books. Despite being founded on the explicit rejection of hereditary monarchy — on the notion of power conferred by birth — we are also a nation that thrives on the inherited wealth of self-made men. As long as you can trace your family dynasty to the hardscrabble origin story of an enterprising striver, who built something from nothing and then passed it down the line to his children and grandchildren, that’s not nepotism: it’s the American dream.

And if your family business is politics, there’s still the spectacle of public elections to offer the pretence of fairness: even with all the money and name recognition in the world, the only way to hold elected office is for the people to put you there. It’s perhaps because our leadership has to regularly win the hearts of the public in a nationwide popularity contest — with the most expensive, most televised, most exacting campaigns in the world — that the U.S. has always conferred a sort of second-tier celebrity cachet on its presidents. And, by extension, on their families.

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The latest presidential progeny to make headlines by cropping up in a position of cultural prominence is Hunter Biden, who announced earlier this month that he’d be showing — and selling — his paintings in a solo exhibition at a New York gallery in October. The elder of the President’s two surviving children, Hunter has no formal artistic training. He had also been keeping a relatively low profile since October 2020, when emails from an old laptop of his surfaced under mysterious circumstances that threatened to torpedo his father’s shot at the presidency.

While the serious allegations of corruption that emerged from the laptop scandal ultimately amounted to nothing, the incident was still embarrassing to Hunter, who has always been a bit of a black sheep. Before his foray into painting he was a lawyer, investor, lobbyist and, briefly, naval officer (he was discharged from the position after less than a month, after testing positive for cocaine). Harsher critics have accused him of being a shady businessman and shameless grifter, using the Biden name for his own benefit. And indeed, the asking prices for Hunter’s paintings are astronomically high for an unknown artist — which only serves to highlight his peculiar brand of celebrity. His work will fetch a high price for the same reason that people pay thousands of dollars to own a teacup stained with Lady Gaga’s lipstick or a jockstrap once worn by Russell Crowe: the little thrill of knowing that a famous person touched it first.

Hunter Biden’s foray into art has been met with some criticism, including a subdued but disapproving editorial in the Washington Post. But the media response to him stands in stark contrast to that received by the large adult Trump children, whose every foray into public life was met with generalised outrage, breaking the age-old tradition of accepting that the ambitions of presidential progeny will always be supported. From Ivanka’s fashion line to Don, Jr.’s books, nobody wanted the Trumps to become as culturally and politically ubiquitous as the Kennedys.

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But that’s only because nothing about the Trump administration, including this, was business as usual. Trump’s first family was in itself unprecedented: never before had a U.S. president boasted five children from three different marriages, most of whom were already at least a little bit famous by the time their father took office. By the standards of previous presidents, it was semi-scandalous if not outright trashy — and worse, Trump’s audacious offspring seemed to share their father’s sensibilities: a hunger for global influence, a contempt for elites and a narcissistic sense of entitlement. It wasn’t just the nepotism; it was that they were so obvious, so shameless, so transparent in their expectations.

Ivanka, especially, seemed to believe that her mere status as presidential progeny meant that she should enjoy a position of influence in national affairs. But here too, it was the entitlement (and the Trump name) rather than the notion of a politically-involved First Daughter that raised hackles. In fact, the latter is something of an American tradition: Maureen Reagan moved into the White House during her father’s presidency and informally advised him on women’s issues. Woodrow Wilson’s daughter, Margaret, took over the role of First Lady after her mother died. Alice Roosevelt once led a diplomatic tour of five Asian countries in 1905 while her father, President Theodore Roosevelt, was trying to negotiate a peace between Japan and Russia.

And yet, Ivanka’s involvement in the Trump administration was seen as so embarrassing, so outré, that her presence at the G20 conference sparked not just wall-to-wall negative media coverage but a viral meme. “How Much Did Ivanka Embarrass Herself at the G20 Summit?” asked The Cut, rhetorically, while Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, “It may be shocking to some, but being someone’s daughter actually isn’t a career qualification.”

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In light of all this, it was easy to imagine that Trump’s presidency represented some sort of turning point — that however much nepotism and corruption and power-grabbing cruelty were once par for the course in American presidential politics, they wouldn’t be once the bad orange man was gone. Indeed, for as long as Donald Trump was in office, the notion persisted that everything would change for the better, and the classier, if only we could vote him out.

The candidate who could remake the presidency into something better, brighter and more noble would have been a game-changer. There was just one problem: in 2020, nobody wanted that. They just wanted to Make America Normal Again — and nothing is more normal, and more American, than a good old-fashioned dynasty from a known and trusted brand. It’s why we embraced Meghan McCain as a media figure in the wake of her father’s death. It’s why nobody finds it especially weird that almost every presidential race since 1992 has included a Bush or a Clinton in the mix. It’s why Kamala Harris’s stepdaughter walked away from the Inauguration with a cult following and a modelling contract.

And it’s why, as sketchy as it might seem, nobody is going to get too upset about Hunter Biden’s new surprise career turn as an in-demand contemporary artist.

That would require dismantling the longstanding American tradition of blurring the lines between politics and celebrity, of being fascinated by, even obsessed with, the families who live in what Jackie Kennedy once called “the People’s house” (in the way that Brits obsess over the residents of Buckingham Palace but can rarely name the children of Prime Ministers). It would also require us to confront some deeply uncomfortable truths about how even in a democracy, dynasties are inevitable. Power pools and cascades down, inter-generationally, always landing in the lap of someone with a familiar last name — giving the lie to the all-American notion that hard work and big dreams are all it takes to succeed. And all of us go along with it, but all of this is familiar.

Hunter Biden’s play for art world grandeur won’t provoke that kind of reckoning. It’s too much business as usual. But the appearance of Donald Trump, Jr. as a top contender on the 2024 Republican primary ticket? Yeah, that might do it.