Nepotism. It’s a word in the dictionary, I swear; and people used to consider it an insult. It means using family connections to get jobs, usually at the expense of those poor bastards not lucky enough to be conceived in the back seat of a Rolls Royce. At least, back in the old days, nepots were discreet, distaining the national media and the front page of the New York Times as part of their machinations. Of course, back in the old days, the networks and the Times would never be so stupid as to allow a nepot to use them in this way. Those days, as they say, are gone with the wind.
Democracy is dead. Long live the queen.
Queen Caroline, I mean — the daughter of a president who wants to be appointed U.S. Senator from the state of New York. Now, I have nothing personal against celebrities, and freely concede that as many as 5% of them may be decent individuals. But I cannot for the life of me understand why so few people are concerned that one would use her familial connections in plain sight to engineer an appointment to the U.S. Senate, thus bypassing that tiresome mainstay of democracy for the rest of us — the election. Yes, an election — that tawdry procedure the rabble have to contend with when they want to serve in public office.
From what I see in the papers and on the internet, the major discussions about Caroline Kennedy’s “campaign” to become Senator have centered around her qualifications to do the job. Qualifications have nothing to do with it. There are probably a half a million people in the state of New York who are just as smart as she is, if not smarter; just as experienced as she is, if not more experienced; just as graceful as she is, if not more graceful.
What this half-million does not have that she does is the ability to pick up the phone and call the governor. If I could pick up the phone and call my governor, I’d probably have a sweet government job, too. It is confounding that a person who has never held a political office, or even lost an election, can call the governor of her state and immediately put herself into the running for what is arguably the second highest elected office in the United States.
I don’t dispute Ms. Kennedy’s right to seek public office. What I have a problem with is her reluctance to run for it like anybody else. Ms. Kennedy is 53 years old, and has been eligible to run for some kind of political office every year since she sipped her first legal glass of chardonnay. This means she has passed on running for office 32 consecutive years. There was a major election two months ago, for crying out loud. If she wants “to serve” so desperately, where was she in November? Anything would do: If she had sought to be Manhattan dogcatcher and lost, today she would at least be able to say she tried. She could say she once held a press conference, knocked on doors in her community, handed out fliers on the street corner, and answered questions from reporters. But there is nothing.
Personally, I think the knocking on doors and answering questions is exactly the the problem. She wants to be a Senator, but she doesn’t want to stoop to work for it. That miserable work of standing in pizza parlors, pumping the hands of hundreds of people you don’t know and will never see again (and right in the middle of flu season to boot) is exactly the reason most of us have never run for public office. It’s tough knocking on a door, only to hear a 70 year-old lady shout from behind a locked screen, “Who the hell are you?” That is when every politician learns what the word constituent really means.
You certainly won’t learn its meaning gazing compassionately out the window of your West Side apartment.
For all we know, she may have been waiting for this opportunity for years. She may have thought to herself a decade ago, “I’m a Kennedy. I’m one of the most famous people in America. If I want a big time political office, I don’t have to enter a political campaign. I can just wait for a vacancy and push for an appointment.” Conjecture, yes. But she passed on a chance to run for Congress in November, is passing on a chance to run for Mayor of New York next year, and instead is waging a penthouse campaign to get a big time job through family connections. She certainly seems smart enough to patiently wait until the perfect time to rub the magic lamp.
People say she has spent a career in public service, raising money for this or that. I keep hearing the figure $70 million in connection with money she has raised, but I refuse to pay attention to it. Anyone who can raise gobs of money like that can run in a regular election. What ever happened to earning your station in life? Is scratching it out in a real political contest to much stress to put on her precious cuticles?
Here is something to consider about Ms. Kennedy. When she first got this lark about the empty Senate seat, she pulled a classic political move. She allowed the story to leak to the press. The cable TV shows kicked the story around for awhile, it ran in a few papers, and she and “her people” were able to judge how the public might react to her candidacy. This process of gauging public opinion is called a trial balloon, and politicians do it all the time. The problem is that trial balloons only work if you are famous enough to get the media to pick up on the story. Carolyn Kennedy had no trouble getting the media to turn cartwheels for her. The trial balloon has gotten so large it has driven almost every other candidate off the page. Some are even saying that the job is Ms. Kennedy’s to have if she wants it. It is astonishing that a private citizen can, with a few phone calls and a leak to the media, maneuver herself into a seat in the U.S. Senate.
This simply isn’t right. In a country that calls itself a democracy, a country that used to be a democracy, this is an embarrassment.
Suppose we stipulate that Caroline Kennedy has a right to run for the U.S. Senate. As one of the most famous people in the state New York, she has already has a half-mile head start over anyone else who aspires to that seat. Appointing her instead of forcing her to run for office is like letting Secretariat run the Derby with a jet pack strapped to his back, or allowing Usain Bolt to be shot out of a cannon in the 100 meter dash instead of making him run from that old, boring starting block. After all, Usain is so fast, he’d beat everyone anyway, so let’s just let him use the cannon. It will make the race more exciting.
Democrats want Kennedy because they think she would be a formidable fund raiser, making her a stronger candidate for re-election. But she is already an impressive fund raiser. Giving her a Senate seat will make her a superstar fund raiser. As a voting member of the Senate and a Kennedy to boot, she will raise money at a Obama-like pace, making her virtually unbeatable. Put another way, if she is appointed the seat now, it will be hers for the rest of her life. Tenure.
This is horribly undemocratic. Embarrassingly undemocratic for a country that is in the sticky position of trying to create a democracy in Iraq. What if Saddam Hussein’s son asked for a cabinet position in the Iraqi government? We wouldn’t be okay with that. Yet, we can’t expect the Iraqis to behave any better than our example.
Kennedy can be partly forgiven for her bald ambition. If I lived my life in such a lofty position that I could pick up the phone, call the governor, and appoint myself to any open political seat I wanted, eventually I might be tempted to give it a try. However, the press cannot be excused for not seeing that the sole reason she is being considered above any other applicant is her celebrity. It is not the job of the media to provide celebrity its perks.
Certainly the Democratic party should want to put a Democrat in the seat, and the strongest and best public servant possible. But you find the strongest candidate through fair elections — at least that is what I once thought — not by putting your friends into high places. It is a disgrace that the Democrats would engage in this kind of insider politics mere weeks after an election in which they promised America they would deliver the exact opposite. The New York Senate seat is not there for the benefit of the Democratic party. It is there for the benefit of the American people, and the American people deserve better than nepotism and cronyism for the foundation of government.
In New York, of all places. Wall Street is disintegrating this very moment because bankers were rewarding each other with huge bonuses and cutting one another in on insider deals. George W. Bush’s presidency failed in no small part because the Bushies valued friendship over qualifications in filling political positions. Now that the Democrats are taking control, they want to make the same mistake, as if the last eight years never happened.
I am not saying Caroline Kennedy is not qualified to be a U.S. Senator. She might be. I might be. But anyone should be able to see that the only reason she is being so seriously considered is because she is a Kennedy. That alone is a reason to give the seat to someone else. Ms. Kennedy can run for the seat any time she wants — or any other public office, for that matter — and, judging by the nice things many people are publicly saying of her, she might win.
So what is the matter with making the most politically advantaged private citizen in America work for her prize the way every other person in this country has to? What is it about this country — what have we lost — that would make us think it is fair to put our collective thumbs on the scale in favor of a queen?