Will Philly crown another family dynasty?

A POLITICAL convention? Or a coronation and a restoration of a family political dynasty of the kind that might have horrified the Founding Fathers who'd drafted the Declaration of Independence just a few miles away?

With so little controversy inside the giant South Philly sports arena, most eyes turned instead to the rare sight of Hollywood celebrities circulating like champagne cocktails around Rittenhouse Square - or the hundreds of protesters who faced off with cops on Broad Street.

Yup, that was Philadelphia in August 2000 - the last time the political world took over the city, for the Republican National Convention that propelled presidential son George W. Bush toward the White House.

And - if everything goes as predicted - that will be Philadelphia again in July 2016, with Hillary Clinton heavily favored to grab the Democratic nod in a historic quest to follow her husband into the Oval Office and become America's first woman president.

Yin, meet yang.

A city that's lousy at crowning sports champions may prove to be great at the art of passing the political crown to the next member of a family dynasty.

"2000 was a coronation - everybody knew that George W. Bush had it in the bag," recalled Randall Miller, history professor at St. Joseph's University.

Of course, a lot has changed in the years since the last time a major party convention was held here. Next summer, delegates will be hopping rides on Uber, staying in rooms they found on Airbnb and hooking up on Tinder - none of which existed at the dawn of this century.

With apologies to LL Cool J, they did call it a comeback when it was announced in November 1998 that the GOP would be coming to what was then called the First Union Center for the first major-party confab here in more than a half-century. The drought years from 1948 to the late 1990s had coincided with the end of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of urban angst, and then-mayor Ed Rendell had lobbied Republicans hard to call attention to the green shoots of a turnaround.

"Some folks suggested that having the Republican Convention here was kind of a milestone, that it forced us to think about where we were and where we were going," recalled David Thornburgh, who headed the Pennsylvania Economy League then and runs the good-government Committee of Seventy now.

The GOP probably dreamed of winning back Philadelphia's vote-rich suburbs, which had started to trend Democratic (and still are today). But Democrat Al Gore would carry Pennsylvania, and the then-strategy of introducing then-Texas Gov. Bush and his perceived-as-fairly-moderate veep pick Dick Cheney to the nation as "compassionate conservatives" is mostly forgotten.

"A generation shaped by Vietnam must remember the lessons of Vietnam," a future president who would sink the nation in an Iraq quagmire just three years later told delegates. Much of what happened in Philly stayed in Philly - subsumed by hanging chads in Florida and then the horrors of 9/11 that would occur over the next 13 months.

In a more nonchalant time, the media voted for glitz over wonkery. The Daily News instituted what it called a "hunk watch" on George P. Bush, nephew of George W. and son of Jeb (and in 2015 a Texas land commissioner), calling him a "Latino sexpot" and "the yummiest member of the Bush family."

But the hottest ticket in town wasn't George P. or George W. but the now-defunct George Magazine, which took over a shoe store on Chestnut Street to host the likes of Michael J. Fox and Muhammad Ali, in a party attended by not-yet Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver. Philadelphia Magazine reported that the Ritz-Carlton sold $120,000 worth of beluga caviar that week.

Is it any wonder that - in what we now recall as a placid era - several thousand also showed up to protest globalization and caviar capitalism? They were spied on and harassed by authorities; police led by then-commissioner John Timoney arrested more than 400, some of whom were held for days on high bail.

In 2016, everything is likely to be bigger - the protests in an era of #BlackLivesMatter, the budget (more than $60 million was spent then; organizers this time are raising at least $84 million), the military hardware of the cops and the tacky excesses of a wealthier 1 percent. But the Hollywood-flecked glitter - presuming that overwhelming front-runner Clinton grabs the nomination and brings her friends from Wall Street to Sunset Boulevard along for the ride - may be what shines the brightest.

The stars will see a city that's gained population and some taller skyscrapers since 2000 - but most importantly, confidence. And then they'll leave to fight a fall election that may well pit Clinton against . . . Jeb Bush.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.