by Molly Ivors
A few weeks ago, a friend at the Crack Den asked me if I would consider taking Clinton's vacated Senate seat. I'm female, over 35, and a lifelong resident of New York State. Legally, I'm qualified. I'm not a lawyer, but neither are plenty of other senators, and I do have a basic grasp of history, politics, and culture. In fact, by the standards of other senators, I'm probably overqualified.
Nevertheless, I would not in a million years consider taking Governor Paterson up on such an offer, were he to show up at my door.
I am not narcissistic enough to believe that I, or anyone like me, ought to be running the country. Would that MoDo had such restraint.
I always thought that Caroline and her brother, John, had special magic capital in America because of their heartbreaking roles in the Kennedy House of Atreus.
Joe Kennedy, the wily patriarch of the clan, had pioneered the use of Hollywood glamour in pursuit of Washington power. With his glossy pop-culture political magazine, George, John reversed that equation, using his stature as an American political prince to persuade Salma Hayek to pose on the cover of his magazine.
I wrote a column once saying that it seemed like a frivolous use of his time. I thought he should run for office and employ his special clout to make life better for Americans. He died before he had the chance.
She's in snit, see, because it's very clear she identifies with Caroline Kennedy as a moderately good-looking Irish woman of a certain age with a head on her shoulders, no matter what she might (or might not) have accomplished in her life. MoDo points out that plenty of senators are there because of accidents of birth or marriage, which she seems to consider the same thing.
As it happens, I'm not deeply offended by the idea of Kennedy becoming a senator, though I'd like to have a vote on it, and I'm pretty sure the Republic would stand even if there weren't a Kennedy in the Senate.
There are other candidates I like better, and I'd prefer to see someone for whom upstate isn't a terrifying and strange world. Say what you will about Clinton: she busted ass upstate. Kennedy looked like she thought a rabid ocelot was going to bite her.
Digby suggests Carolyn Maloney, and she looks good, but as non-New York residents may not realize, there's a considerable amount of tension between we who live above Rockland County and those who live below it. Louise Slaughter would kick butt as a senator, and she lives near Rochester.
But should Paterson chose to go with the celebrity appointment, let's hope the senators are not as ungracious to her as they were to Roland Burris (though it looks like it's at least partly an administrative thing back in Illinois). Maybe he should have had the foresight to be born a scion (admitedly, Andrew Cuomo had that foresight, and it didn't do him any good).
What Burris really should have had the foresight to do was be born an Irish girl in the 50's. Then MoDo might have taken his case to heart.