I'm also with Jane.
Everyone seems to be salivating because Caroline Kennedy called David Patterson and is apparently interested in the Senate seat being vacated by Hillary Clinton.
It's a truly terrible idea.
Her leadership could have been really helpful when the rest of us were trying to keep the progressive lights on and getting the stuffing beaten out of us by a very well-financed right wing for the past eight years. But when things were tough, she was nowhere to be found.
Now that the Democrats are in power, she'd like to come in at the top. We have absolutely no idea if she's qualified, or whether she can take the heat of being a Kennedy in public life. She's certainly shown no appetite for it in the past. She'll have a target on her back and if she can't take it, if she crumbles, she will become a rallying point that the right will easily organize around.
I hate political dynasties. Hate them. But Jane is right, in this case, the idea is particularly egregious -- Caroline has done nothing to help beat back the right-wing machine. But now, she's supposed to be handed by fiat what others fight their whole lives to attain?
In the mean time, I'm glad she had fun being part of a winning campaign in a year that saw a rather rosy playing field for Democrats. But simply being well-known and a member of the "American nobility" in a celebrity-driven society shouldn't be enough to axiomatically entitle her to be a member of the US Senate.