Editor's letter: Siblings—so close, so different

last updated 8 January 2015

I wasn’t blessed with a sister, but brother, do I have brothers. Though at least one of them is smarter than me and at least one of them is better looking, I’ll always be older than both of them. According to George Howe Colt (see The last word), that gives me a leg up on greatness, since firstborns are overrepresented among presidents, astronauts, and Nobel Prize winners. Having fallen short of the mark, I take solace in finding that the proclivities linked to birth order aren’t absolute. Second-born sons, Colt says, tend to be flexible compromisers, for example. Tell that to anyone who heard younger brother Rand Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky, perorate for 13 hours straight last week against President Obama’s drone policy (see Controversy of the week). Paul’s uncompromising nature is what makes him a hero to libertarians, and so irks Democrats and establishment Republicans.

Exceptions are no rarer among us firstborns. Jeb Bush may be an agreeable younger brother, but as he toyed this week with a 2016 presidential run, some said he’ll never live down the record of older brother George W. (see Best columns: The U.S.). The 43rd president showed the self-confident assertiveness that comes with primogeniture, but polls say Americans consider him the second-worst president ever, after Richard M. Nixon. In trying to convince people to give him a fresh look, Jeb could have cited research showing that siblings are almost as different from one another as unrelated people are. To his credit, he did not, saying instead that he loved his brother. Clearly, he knows that no one is as likely as our siblings to witness us as both sniveling toddlers and wizened seniors. It pays to hold them close.