I think it would have made most
sense for Barack Obama to have appointed Caroline Kennedy a delegate to the
United Nations in the manner of Shirley Temple Black or William F.
Buckley. But I am not going berserk as
my colleagues seem to be over the prospect that she will be appointed
senator. The reason has to do, I suspect, with my
understanding of political dynasties. There is a difference between the Kennedy
dynasty and, say, the Biden, Clinton, or Bush dynasties. And the difference is that many Americans
feel they owe the Kennedy family something for their service.
Can this really be true?
Sure, "many" as in the sense of "Judis and a couple of hundred other ancien regime loyalists". That's "many" compared to the number of people that you can fit in a phone booth. But it's not "many" in the sense of "a percentage of the population expressible as a number with something larger than 0 to the left of the decimal point."
Posted by: JimB | December 22, 2008 at 06:34 PM
Uh, no.
Posted by: MattF | December 22, 2008 at 07:01 PM
This American certainly doesn't feel like he owes the Kennedys anything. In fact, I may be the only Democrat who sees the actual JFK presidency as totally mediocre, if not actually bad (Vietnam). I agree with Gore Vidal, who said something along the lines that he should have taken more naps (Bush too).
The other bit that really sticks in my craw is just how fake the entire Kennedy image was (yes, I know, all politicians present a visage). But Kennedy might very well have been the worst. The guy wasn't playing any touch football or anything, he was hopped up on amphetamines and powerful painkillers. Not too mention the adultery, the sleeziness of his dad, RFK being a McCartheyite and so on and so forth.
Posted by: Matt Zeitlin | December 24, 2008 at 02:07 AM
I think you would be hard pressed to find many Americans who think that a Kennedy is owed anything by anyone. Outside of their worshipful enclaves in the media, the usual reaction to them is boredom mixed with contempt.
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