Caroline

If you think about it for just a moment, the current media frenzy over Caroline Kennedy’s potential appointment as New York’s junior senator is a sad reflection of our collective obsession with the country’s glitterati and their supposed entitlement as our opinion leaders.

It appears that Caroline Kennedy is a decent woman who, like many women who grew up with wealth and power, tries to contribute to society as best she can. But at 51 years of age, Caroline has never held a real job, never been elected to any office, and with the exception of the past year, has never expressed any political opinions of substance. Obviously, none of that disqualifies her as a potential senator, but it does seem odd that she’s an odds-on favorite for the position when many, many other qualified democratic candidates are available to New York’s Governor Paterson.

Victor Davis Hansen comments:

Caroline Kennedy is no doubt a fine individual who by all accounts has led an exemplary life. But her proposed appointment to the US Senate is a rare reflection of ourselves--the glittering of the aristocracy in the left's vision of an otherwise egalitarian America, the notion that blue-chip certification conveys status and wisdom rather than proven excellence through the life-school of hard knocks, and the ethical bankruptcy of the media that has no principled notion of disinterested inquiry, but now serves as an fawning appendage of the Left.

In short, appointing Caroline Kennedy to the Senate from New York tells us a lot more about ourselves than it does even her.

Caroline's many defenders cite her Harvard and Columbia education as qualification for the Senatorial position. Puleeze. Again from Hansen:

Much is recently made of Barack Obama's evocation of the 'Best and Brightest' Kennedy coterie, as he draws heavily on so-called "smart" people from the Ivy League. But the media's current heavies in the financial meltdown--President George Bush, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, SEC head Chris Cox, former director of Fannie Mae Franklin Rains, and Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Barney Frank all have in common only Harvard degrees, which apparently are requisites to have overseen financial disaster rather than tools to have prevented it.

On balance, it doesn’t matter much whether or not Caroline gets the Senate appointment. My guess is she won’t, not because she has weak qualifications, but because Patterson will do the harsh political calculus and decide to eliminate a strong potential political opponent, New York AG Andrew Cuomo, by pushing him upstairs. Then again, never underestimate the raw power of the Kennedy machine.