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Wednesday, January 07, 2009

=Breaking News= There's actually someone about whom Maureen Dowd feels no need to snark
Posted by Jill | 5:41 AM
And it's Caroline Kennedy:
found it bizarre that when Caroline offered to use her magic capital — and friendship with Barack Obama — to help take care of New York in this time of economic distress, she was blasted by a howl of “How dare she?”

People are suddenly awfully choosy about who gets to go to the former home of Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond and Robert Torricelli.

Although Americans still have enough British in their genes to be drawn to dynasties, W. has no doubt soured the country on scions. And the camps of the other two New York dynasties — the Clintons (still bitter about Caroline’s endorsement of Obama) and the Cuomos (who’d like that Senate seat for Andrew) — have certainly done their best to undermine Caroline.

Congress, which abdicated its oversight role as the Bush crew wrecked the globe and the economy, desperately needs fresh faces and new perspectives, an infusion of class, intelligence and guts.

People complain that the 51-year-old Harvard and Columbia Law School grad and author is not a glib, professional pol who knows how to artfully market herself, and is someone who hasn’t spent her life glad-handing, backstabbing and logrolling. I say, thank God.

The press whines that she doesn’t have a pat answer about why she wants the job. I’ve interviewed a score of men running for president; not one had a good answer for why he wanted it.

Robert Duffy, the mayor of Rochester, complained that when the would-be senator visited the Democratic headquarters there recently, she did not respond to pictures in a conference room of her father, mother, brother and herself as a little girl. Isn’t it creepy to expect her to emote on cue? Isn’t it more authentic to want to keep some of your most private feelings to yourself?

I know Caroline Kennedy. She’s smart, cultivated, serious and unpretentious. The Senate, shamefully sparse on profiles in courage during Dick Cheney’s reign of terror, would be lucky to get her.

And believe me, she talks a whole lot better than the former junior senator from New York, Al D’Amato, who once wailed that he was “up to my earballs” in some mess, and another time complained to me that those “little Jappies” bring over boats full of cars and then take the boats back empty.

Anyhow, it isn’t how you say it. It’s what you say. Hillary Clinton is a great talker, but she never stood up in the Senate to lead a crusade against any Republican horror show, from Terri Schiavo to the Bush administration’s dishonest push to war.

Sitting in the Senate gallery on Tuesday as senators were sworn in by Dick Cheney, I saw plenty of lawmakers who had benefited from family.


I don't have any strong feelings one way or the other about Kennedy. It's kind of hard to get on one's high horse about someone who thinks s/he can dance into the presidency on the strength of one's name and family mystique when we look at the outgoing junior Senator from New York. In general, I dislike political dynasties, because they tend to be based on name recognition and fondness for a memory, and also because there is this unfortunate royalist streak that Americans still have that has had us longing for a return to Camelot for the last forty years; a royalist streak that had us calling the father of the current buffoon-in-chief "George I" or "Bush I" and still may yet give us more representatives of that obviously inbred and sadly intellectually lacking family.

It seems to me that there has been a certain troubling arrogance about Kennedy's sudden enthusiasm for public office, one in which she doesn't feel obligated to disclose the kind of personal and financial information that other mere mortals do. On the other hand, it has to be difficult to jump into this ring when you are the subject of a million White House pictures from 1962 of two adorable chidren of a young, attractive couple just when another young, attractive couple with two adorable children is about to enter the White House; and equally hard to be the surviving sibling of a brother whose own possible future in politics was uncertain, but who had his father's charisma combined with his mother's looks.

It seems clear, however, that the press coverage of Caroline Kennedy, who seems to be back on an inside track to appointment to the soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat from New York, is dividing into two camps -- the "How dare she" camp, and the "But she's a KENNEDY!" camp, in which we surprisingly find Maureen Dowd planting her flag.

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2 Comments:
Blogger Mo MoDo said...
Dowd does take a few cheap shots at Caroline's "you know" verbal tic.
1/7/09, 9:48 AM  
Blogger Bob said...
It isn't a cheap shot to mention "you know," because it makes her sound like an adolescent -she already has a thin, whiny voice, & the you knows fill out sentences that are already insubstantial & evasive. In national politics, New York State means New York City, & New York City means Manhattan. Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg is Manhattan. But can she bring federal bucks to New York State? That's the #1 job of a Senator.
1/7/09, 5:29 PM  
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