Do us, the State of New York, and the country a favor a stop throwing words like "nepotism" and "monarchy" around when speaking of Caroline Kennedy's possible appointment to Hillary Clinton's vacant Senate seat and put yourself in her shoes for a second.
Your name is Caroline Kennedy. You are a 51 year old white woman whose parents were John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, and Jacqueline Kennedy, one of the greatest female icons in American history. Your uncles are, respectively, Robert F. Kennedy (Attorney General of the United States, United States Senator) and Ted Kennedy (United States Senator). Five days before your sixth birthday, your father is murdered. Five years later, your uncle is murdered.
Despite politics being your family business and despite the fact that your family is adored by hundreds of millions of people in the United States and around the world, you reject politics and do not directly involve yourself in it. You go to Harvard and then to Columbia Law.
Following a stint at the Daily News and the Met, you get involved in education in New York City. You help raise $65 million dollars for the city's public schools as chief executive for the Office of Strategic Partnerships for the New York City Department of Education. You also serve as Vice Chair of The Fund for Public Schools, an organization that raises much-needed money for public schools. In both instances, you use your last name to solicit donations; something, chances, are, you don't like doing.
As time goes on and America grows older, it seems as if your family is no longer the source of hope and optimism but rather excess and abuse of privledge. Your brother, seemingly one of the only Kennedys not tainted by scandal in this era, is killed in a plane crash. Your mother dies. Your cousins are arrested and blacken your family's name. The only shining light amidst all this darkless is the legacy of what your last name once stood for and the tireless work of your last remaining uncle, Teddy, in the Senate.
Then something happens. A man named Barack Obama electrifies the nation like no one had since your own father and your uncle Bobby. You break your long political silence and write, in the Times, an op-ed called "A President Like My Father" and endorse Obama. You join your uncle Teddy and travel the country on his behalf. You begin to feel feelings of hope that people have always told you your father gave to them.
In May, your uncle falls ill. Brain cancer. His life begins to reach it's twilight. In one sense, your endorsement and his endorsement has passed your father's famous torch to Obama. In the same sense, with your uncle in decline and none of your other family members poised to take his place, that you may need to step up and represent your family on the national stage. You feel the pressure.
In November, Obama wins. Vindication. In December, Obama appoints Hillary to be Secretary of State. Oppurtunity.
"Should I do this," you would ask yourself. Should you go into a business you've done your best to distance yourself from until the moment was just right; until the "real deal" came along. At the same time this "real deal" came, your uncle and last remaining member of the brothers falls victim to illness. Your uncle might be advocating on your behalf. The president-elect may be singing your praises. The governor may be interested in making the offer to you. This is where you are at right now.
Caroline Kennedy has made it a point of avoiding politics her entire life for obvious reasons. It is a business who got both her father and her uncle killed and brought the blemishes of her family into the public arena. At no point, to our knowledge, is there any evidence that Caroline's potential thought process towards the Senate seat has been an evil scheme to restore the Kennedys to power. The way her possible appointment is spoken of around here, one would believe she is mounting an army about to stage a coup to bring about a Kennedy monarchy. This is not the case. This is a merely a woman who happens to be from a famous family who has dedicated her to life to progressive causes who now, upon the near-certain passing of her last uncle, most likely feels that it is time for her to reluctantly take up the causes that her family has fought for over the course of half a century. She is not a monster, a nepotistic queen in waiting, or an ambitious hack: she is a progressive from a family with a long history of public service. She could be the next junior senator from New York or she could not. Time will tell. But before you hate on her, put yourself in her shoes and ask yourself whether you believe being called to public service is an honor worthly or acceptance or a chance to re-assert the dominance of your family in some kind of scheme. If you thought of it as the latter, you might not be so quick to cry foul.