Caroline on my mind
Ross Douthat on Caroline Kennedy et al:
Well, look, obviously worse things have happened to American politics than the appointment of Caroline Kennedy to a U.S. Senate seat. But what’s at issue here isn’t so much dynastic politics, the gubernatorial-appointment system, or the particular entitlement of the rich and well-connected as the intersection of all three: Taken alone, these phenomena are tolerable; taken together, they’re noxious enough to deserve at least some pushback. Yet instead, Kennedy’s bizarre pseudo-campaign for the New York Senate (conducted amid a major scandal involving another Senate appointment!) has received all sorts of fawning press coverage from a media that still seems starstruck by her father forty-five years after his death.
Again, I can live with legacy politicians, underqualified appointees, and entitled rich people. I just think the Senate can do without an rich, underqualified legacy appointee whose press coverage would lead you to believe that she’s a cross between Florence Nightingale, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Princess Diana and Princess Leia. But it looks like that’s what we’re going to get.
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