Saturday's wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle is creating another surge of American royal mania, and with a particular twist — besotted chatter about their offspring someday running for Congress, or even president, while remaining in the line of succession to the British throne.

It's a fanciful notion, regardless of whether the Los Angeles actress retains dual citizenship after she passes her British citizenship test, because the Constitution prevents titled nobles from taking federal office.

But the larger point is this: The U.S. electorate remains as fascinated as ever with influential families on both sides of the Atlantic and, perhaps as a result, has only occasionally declined to expand the power of the clans that have sought to foster an American political royal lineage over the past two centuries. People named Adams, Harrison, Taft, Roosevelt, Rockefeller and, more recently, Kennedy or Bush have won far more elections than they've lost.