I totally forgot Jane was going to be on. Ugh!! I saw Katrina vanden Huevel though. She was right on target.

So Patterson should appoint someone who has actually campaigned for an office, no matter what that office is?

Jane, being solid, as usual. It’s almost getting boring watching her media savvy shine through.

Do not dare question the wisdom of the Lake!

Jane was fabulous! I particularly liked Jane’s expression when Shuster popped Ruth’s fantasies…!

Jane! You were awesome – what a contrast.

Hurrah for Jane! Why are people losing their minds in gushing over the thought of Caroline Kennedy being appointed senator. I can’t believe the weak reasoning. It’s the only way to hold onto this seat in 2010? Huh? Lawrence O’Donnell pronounces us lucky to have her. Huh? It speaks to me of what a dangerous shape our democracy is in. It’s like the only antidote to the Bush family we can imagine is “our” dynasty. I’m not for disallowing the sons and daughters of American aristocrats from running for office, but that’s the thing–run for office. If Caroline wants to be a public service, then run for the state senate or something. The sense of entitlement that corrodes our politics is sickening. Jane has been stellar on this issue.

All I hear is what a useless bunch of do-nothings all these Senator’s and Congresspeople are, ow all the sudden you need to “earn’ the right to be a useless do-nothing. You are killin me over here.

When you were a young student, did you ever have to sit in the corner? :)

When I was a young student the judge said, “do you want to go in the army or to jail”?

The republicans must love it when we beat up our own. That said…Al Franken, just because he’s a celebrity, is not entitled to anything. I hope he loses so we can use this as an example of what we mean about Caroline Kennedy. How dare she want to be a Senator! Chain yourself to the washing machine, girl, because that’s where you belong! No liberals in office please! We want more Blue Dog Democrats for crying out loud! And don’t forget to iron my shirt I sent ya. LOL

Yea, and where was she at the 68 Convention?

I think the point here is we (America) can no longer afford the luxury of voting the feel-good ticket. “I voted for the guy I’d like to have a beer with. I don’t really know anything about his views, just that he fits in my comfort zone, so I don’t have to do the work and pay attention.”

Yes, dear, I read that, here.
And, btw, thank you for the link you provided yesterday on Lisa’s Thread. Interesting thread, I thought. Although, thinking about it today, I was somewhat down about the possibilities of conversations without shouting. Still, wanted to thank you.

I agree with Jane in general, but for some reason, the rules don’t apply in my mind for Carolyn. I just have so much admiration for her…

I’d feel the same way if Jane were appointed to a senatorial seat. I wouldn’t ask her to go campaign!

Yes, Jane, and I’m sure you agree that the absolute most important thing for Hillary’s replacement to be is a career politician.

Because that’s what we really need more of.

Stop, already.

damn, this place isn’t as silly as I thought!

Raven – boo

Al’s entitled to that seat because he’s a little, Jewish, wrestler with a great sense of humor and that’s the soul of that seat; not some carpet bagging, party switching, water carrier who was only elected by the miserably tragic death of Paul Wellstone. As for the Senate seats currently up for grabs, I think the Governor of Illinois is currently doing an excellent jobs of proving why special elections are a preferred method of selection. What’s wrong with wanting a democratic process?

Go Jane.

As a NYer, the thought of a annoiting someone just because she is a Kennedy, who has shown no interest in politics, turns my stomach.

thank you
thank you very much

If you think there are no qualified politicians, what are you doing here? This site is about trying to get the best qualified people who are actually interested in, and good at the job, into office.

eCAHN and Jane, who would you appoint if you had the power?

when were you appointed boss of what this site is about?

At age 11 you wanted her to be campaigning in 68?

As if the Clintons were not annointed in New York by Rangel and crowd. Caroline Kennedy is just fine and so much more than the Clintons.

No, I wanted her at the bandshell in Grant Park yelling off the pigs!

Obviously appointees don’t campaign (in the conventional sense).
But from a strictly political sense, you want to appoint someone who will successfully campaign for re-election or you want a place-holder.
This is the reason Valarie Jarrett would have made a louse replacement for Obama. Years in public life without a single campaign.
Kennedy is more of a question-mark, but Patterson should be very certain of her commitment, which might be difficult.

I love Jane and her sharp as tacks mind. But the deal with “elective office” is that it’s not a level playing field. You need to be well heeled and well connected to run for senate. And if you look at the crowd in there now, there are plenty less intelligent with much worse ideas than Ms Kennedy.

Even if she were to run, she be starting at the 50 yard line with access to oodles of money and support. But she’s no dummy as far as I can tell.

And yea, I would take a Christy or a Jane just like that even though neither of these “babes” has been in elective office.

I prefer Nadler or Cuomo, but there are plenty of talented people out there whose name I don’t even know. I’d like to have some choices and not have it shoved done on me.

And don’t forget Hillary was NOT a New Yorker and had never won an election before she started at the 75 yard line. She turned out fine for a DINO.

I always thought this site was a place for people to share information and have discussions.
It’s been my experience that discussions can include various opinions.
Of course, as always, I could be wrong.

I didn’t know ahead of time that Jane was going to be on. What a nice surprise! She was great. I mostly agree with her about Caroline don’t want the Dems to lose the seat in two years.

could it be the expert meant this thread instead of this site?

So that’s how you ended up in Nam, eh?

Now now Raven do you think her momy wasn’t a wee bit protective of her back then? I am not advocating for her mind you, but she isn’t a career Politician. Adn a few of them in Government wouldn’t be all that bad.

Lawrence O’Donnell’s take.

I disagreed with O’Donnell on the idea of a draft, so I don’t see him as a guru.

Exactly. The nerve of her! Now go make my dinner, Caroline! LOL

Patterson should just be careful and not play politics with the seat. It’s unfortunate that the state of New York allows for the special election to held in 2010.

’scuse me for thinking Blue America was an integral part of FDL. I must have been hallucinating.

Korea, too young for Nam, had to be 18. Went to Nam after Korea( and after watching the 68 convention at Ft Lewis while we saddled up).

Jeebus, Lord save us from Reptiles exuding sweet venom TV.

I gotta go take a shower.

Who could imagine a Governor abusing th power of a Senatorial appointment?
That would be without precedent.

Actually I don’t give a rats ass either way. I think it’s funny as shit how all bowed up people get over stuff they have zero control over.

again

Some kind of placeholder (I suggested Paterson himself, nobody liked that) so that the people of New York can decide for themselves in 2010.

If Caroline Kennedy really wants it, she should be willing to campaign for the next two years.

Has a poll been done in NY to see what the people think about this appointment?

At least you got to watch it! In Germany we got the Stars and Stripes period. No Boob tube… but we did have Fooz Ball /s

And Caroline can’t be a placeholder?

And your answer was . . . ? *g*

And primo smack

Special elections are fine with me, but in NY and as of right now (and we don’t know if the Governor of NY has committed a felony yet! LOL!), Governor Patterson will pick who he wants to fill Hillary Clinton’s spot (which by the way, Hillary says she won’t resign until she’s been accepted by the Senate), and he may NOT pick Caroline at this point. If he decided to have a special election instead, I’d be fine with that too.

Got in a little hometown jam
sent me off. . . .you know the drill.

I was much too good lookin to go to St Charles.

Blog: “Oyez!”, ditch

Dang didn’t see any of that!

Does this precedent mean we have to make room for the Wasilla first son decades hence?

If he makes it home.

Okay, but how many placeholders get reelected? It happened with Bilbray in CA-50. Name recognition becomes huge.

I truly understand the point you made on Schuster’s program; this is a democracy and not an aristocracy. Very true. But it’s a great big gamble. Whomever Patterson appoints stands a good chance of being re-elected.

I thought Jane was cool but I’d rather have heard her rail about Barak not being progressive enough.

Mel Carnahan’s wife filled his position when he was killed/murdered died, but lost 2 years later to a republican. Why? No one knew who the hell she was except for the Senator’s wife!

http://www.wanttoknow.info/wellstonecarnahan

Caroline Kennedy, on the other hand, has a whole nation that knows her. The only ones who truly hate her guts are the ones who applauded her father’s assassination at the hands of the neocons.

Okay, you make me laugh. I’m glad you’re back, but you’re in a bit of a mood here tonight, honey! *g*

LOL
took me long enough to get that, but it was so worth it! Missed you, punaise.

it was a nonsensical stretch… :~)

A bluedog Dem, Ed Case was appointed to replace Patsy Mink when she died shortly after being re-elected, and, he lost his seat the next election to progressive Dem, Mazie Hirono… It was a good thing too…!

Sonny Bono’s wife took the placeholder too.

What’s the point here? Patterson needs to appoint someone as Senator. That someone may elect to run for re-election in 2010. By that time we should have decent healthcare legislation and that is what CK would be partly responsible for. CK endorsed BO, persuaded, by all reports, her uncle to endorse BO. CK is not a con artist. She is straight forward and has a great demeanor which makes her quite effective, unlike the Clintons and Rangel and that bunch which burdened us New Yorkers with the Clintons.

If CK helps get healthcare in by 2010, that will be enough. If she wants to do more she will have to win re-election in 2010. What other Democrat in New York does JH have in mind to be appointed as US Senator?

That’s right. She did. ;-)

how about Lucy for placeholder?

I totally screwed up. Bilbray was not appointed. Sorry.

You know what? After a full day of he-whose-name-cannot-be-spoken (because no one can pronounce it, but it’s Rod Blagojevich), I really do wonder about the wisdom of stuffing Congress full of more pols. Lifers. Political fixtures. What happens to people who were so full of promise and promises when they are first elected? There is something seriously toxic in the political soup, or so it seems to me. But remember, I’m usually a morning person here. Kind of a cocoa and fruit loops gal.

Ian is saving us from ourselves upstairs.

If I lived in NY and Lucy was up for re-election in 2010 after being appointed by Governor Patterson, I’d vote for her. ;-) We could be completely surprised by Caroline Kennedy, meaning, in 2 years we could have CKNY popping veins on her forehead like Uncle Teddy does on the floor of the Senate when he’s screaming at the republicans and the next thing we know….the whole nation wants her back for another 6 year run!

Hey, you never know. It could happen. ;-)

This is unkind, and possibly untrue (i just can’t think of any offhand)…

But were there a Republican Senator/President who was held high in the public esteem, whose family had both legendary achievement and legendary tragedy in their history, and who had scaled the political heights repeatedly – would their daughter/niece/sister or son/nephew/brother be qualified/entitled to an appointment to the United States Senate, never having shown an inclination to campaign for any office, ever?

Just because I cannot think of one does not mean there isn’t one. But I can think of many reasons to bitch about it, were the possibility to present itself.

Nobody who wants the office after 2010 would be a “placeholder.”

As a New Yorker, I would say No Way! Caroline has done an admirable job of protecting her privacy, good for her. She has not once in my memory come out and made a statement, let alone fight for any issue, not the war, not racial justice during the police killings, not AIDS, not poverty and income disparity, especially evident in New York (her husband’s an investment banker), not even 9/11 (when, I just bet, she fled the city along with most of New York’s elite). Not once. And please don’t tell me about all the fine work she did on education, she headed a fund that raised private funds for NY City public schools; ie, she contacted her & her husband’s rich fiends and business contacts, just like being on any society board. Big deal.

I was fine with her being named UN Ambassador, or to some other such post. But the Senate, no way.

Oh, and loved the interview, Ruth Marcus, Ur-Villager, undergrad Yale, Harvard Law, demonstrated her incisive thinking, intellectual rigor and strong fiber. Or maybe not, maybe just gooey wanna-be royalist sentiment. Yeah, the proto-typical Villager, no wonder the traditional media is in freefall.

FWIW, it seems to me that Caroline Kennedy is a thoroughly decent person. That’s refreshing in itself. ANd what was the drumbeat about Obama? Something like it’s more important to have good judgment than experience, or something along those lines. I dunno. Makes my brain tired. Must. Not. Worry. Pretty. Little. Head. About. Such. Things. Toodles!

Ruth Marcus: ‘Do I sound silly?’

the answer: ‘You sound like a girl who should be hanging out at the local Build-A-Bear’

So here’s what I find sick and creepy. Nowhere in any of this discussion — not in Jane’s original post or O’Donnell’s or in the Shuster-mediated dialog or in this entire comment thread have I seen or heard a single word about a single position Ms Kennedy holds on a single issue.

What bearing does any of this hyperventilation have on democracy without some articulation about what Ms Kennedy cares about and would fight for, or against?

*patting your pretty little head* LOL

I think Caroline Kennedy would be great as a Senator for NY, but for some, she represents ‘more of the same’. Barack doesn’t see her that way and neither do I. ;-)

Were Caroline to exhibit any taste for politics (New York-style or any other), this would be a lot easier to compute.
I think she is plain wrong for this because her lack of embrace of politics will short her terribly in the end (and good for her), and is an enormous disservice to her potential constituents, should she either choose to run for election, or choose NOT to run.

As stated earlier, she is a spectacular appointment (I think I personally know her positions), and a horrible pick as a politician (again, good for her).

I totally forgot Jane was going to be on. Ugh!! I saw Katrina vanden Huevel though. She was right on target.

If I was in charge I’d happily take Jane and Katrina as top advisers over a lot of these other jokers. Go get ‘em ladies!

At age 11 you wanted her to be campaigning in 68?

Oh the inhumanity. Brain bleach please.

I would simply stand aside and allow them to run the entire show. Then again, the prospect of taking credit for their combined brilliance is kind of appealing… *G*

Proud of you, Jane. Speak truth to the bobble-heads.

I agree with you generally, but now that you mention it, she IS a big believer in privacy, not just for herself, but for all. I think she wrote a book about it with the legal lowdown. This wouldn’t be a bad thing given our post 9/11 FISA status.

Maybe CK IS campaigning, for an appointment. Not necessarily for the Senate seat. Maybe more like Ambassador to Ireland or something with foreign policy trappings.

In most cases, I disagree with Dynasty — but I think it quite unfair not to mention in the case of Caroline Kennedy a few of the things she has actually done that might just add to the level of intelligence in the Senate. Most of these things have gone unmentioned in this debate.

In reading Ted Sorensen’s recent book — he offers considerable detail as to how, beginning when she was about 15, he took her through a multi-year tutorial on the politics of JFK. They hung out at the Kennedy Library for days at a time, going through files — both open and closed — and through that process she learned about each of the key issues JFK had to deal with both during his Senate years, and as President. Sorensen provided her with reading lists regarding many of these topics (she did the reading) and then followed long discussions about it all. Jackie wanted her prepared to assume the Family Seat on the board of the Library, and she didn’t want the Irish Mafia influencing her introduction to the topics — thus Sorensen. From what Sorensen has to say, I gather the two subjects that most interested her were the Cuban Missile Crisis and Civil Rights.

With respect to the Cuban Missile Crisis — Caroline eventually planned and executed a three part set of conferences — the first in Havana, the second in Moscow, and the third in Boston that brought together the living participants in all three countries, the Historians, and some people from the press to sort out the crisis. Each country declassified virtually all the relevant archives and made them available to scholars and thus over a three year period the conference met, reviewed the documents and analysis, and deposited both their consideration and review — and all the international documentation in facilities in all three countries. In the US of course, it is at the Kennedy Library. Apparently Caroline planned a good deal of the proceedings, arranged for books to be published, etc. (Things like Patterns of Soviet Crisis Management — you know, your ordinary best seller.) Caroline did this during the first Clinton Administration — largely because Bill Clinton was willing to get US documents declassified in a thorough way. (He was also willing to grant visas for Cuban Scholars to come to the US to participate, and for US participants to travel to Cuba.) It was her first big effort after she took a seat on the Library Board, and after the Irish Mafia’s power over the way the Library worked was ended. It is considered now a model in how Presidential Libraries should work with Scholars and Historians on classified, controversial and sensitive issues, particularly when international negotiation is necessary to flesh out the whole story. You can’t deal with this one without Cuban and Russian participation.

As to Civil Rights — Caroline Kennedy has for sometime been on the Board of the NAACP Legal and Educational Foundation — not the same as the NAACP. Commonly called the INC FUND, it is the outgrowth of the specialized Law Firm Thurgood Marshall built back in the 30’s and 40’s to fight the major Civil Rights Cases — and it continues that work. Virtually all the INC fund board members are working Constitutional Lawyers, as is Caroline Kennedy. These days much of the INC fund work is in Appeals Courts, and Kennedy is associated with a major Civil Rights Firm and works on INC Fund briefs.

She has written a book on the Bill of Rights, with a co-author from her firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison. It is written for a popular audience but is essentially a constitutional law effort — much detail on key and critical case law as it defines the meaning of “Rights.” And yes, it covers privacy as it has been construed from the rights and case law — but it deals with much more. It might be interesting to ask what kind of constitutional questions Caroline Kennedy has worked on as a lawyer, connected to the INC Fund.

My guess is that she chose this kind of legal practice largely because she had three children, the two oldest are in College or beyond now, and the third is just starting college. While I am certain she had household help and all — she did raise her children herself. Writing briefs and a book can easily be combined with organizing a family — much easier than, for instance, doing trial law.

Before she went to Law School she worked with her Mother on a major publication on the Moghul Law and Arts in India. As part of this, she worked as an intern in Jaipur, the location of much Moghul Art as well as a University faculty dedicated to the study of Moghul governance of India. I believe she was resident there for the greater part of a year. I know a former Fulbright Professor who overlapped with her year there, a Political Scientist, and he thought she was a very serious student of Moghul governance. What that detailed knowledge has to do with serving New York in the Senate, I don’t know — but I bet no one else in the Senate has actually studied Islamic Law and Governance in Sixteenth Century India.

In recent years she has been working with Joel Klein on the New York City Schools. Apparently among other things, she has raised nearly a hundred million dollars for projects not covered by tax dollars. Much of it, I believe has gone toward building out some of the Charter Schools in the New York System, but also renovation of older and poorer schools in the system. She seems to have also worked to develop and fund Arts, Music and Dance programs in the schools. She is apparently pretty deep in the weeds as to the problems of large urban public school systems, and has considerable knowledge of what is needed.

In the Obama Campaign, I believe she took primary responsibility for organizing the Fellows Program — which set up short term schools on community organization for volunteers, and then sent them out to work in the many Field Offices established around the country. Most of the Fellows were recent college graduates or college students.

Now I don’t know if she would be the best of all possible Senators in the best of all possible worlds — but besides having a coloring book named for her when she was three or four, I think she would bring considerable life experience to the Senate that it does not otherwise have, and that just might enrich the place. I am not bothered by the fact that she has never run for office — the Senate is full of people who have climbed state political ladders as a career. I doubt if she would have trouble raising campaign money, and she would have her choice of campaign managers — and she would not need to depend on PAC’s and Lobbyists for either money or information on legislative matters.

What has distressed me in the last few days of the discussion about all this is the failure to actually look up or ask the question, what has she been up to all these years? I think she has actually done fairly interesting stuff in addition to raising a family.

A poll of New Yorkers? Gasp! I thought we just had to march in lock step with Jane here, like Atrios and others seem to have.

Let’s all bash Caroline some more now for not being a career pol, please, ’cause Sarah’s gone quiet this week and god knows, they’re cut from the same cloth.

Thank you Sara: I had NO idea of any of that and it is a very rich, innovative, and accomplished history. I hope there is a way for Caroline Kennedy to use all of this knowledge to our collective benefit as we go forward.