Hendrik Hertzberg: Appointments

[babylonsister]

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/12/22/081222taco_talk_hertzberg

Appointments
by Hendrik Hertzberg December 22, 2008

snip//


Meanwhile, back in the sleepy, often law-abiding state of New York, Governor David Paterson, who owes his office to the (strictly private) bad behavior of his predecessor, has been pondering whom to appoint to replace Senator Hillary Clinton, who plans to resign her seat once she is confirmed as Secretary of State. According to press reports, the list of possibilities under consideration is as strikingly unimaginative as if the choice were being made in the usual way—i.e., by the people, as mediated through and manipulated by party primaries, fundraising prowess, non-stop polling, ethnic entitlement, and regional balancing. “Among the governor’s inner circle, there is a desire to pick someone from upstate New York, since the region has no representation in statewide office,” the Times reports. “A woman or a Latino would also be desirable.” The current roster (with accompanying parochial concerns) includes at least three members of Congress (one female and upstate, one female and Hispanic, one just upstate), two city executives (one upstate, one Hispanic), one labor leader (the teachers’ union), and two dynasts (one Cuomo, one Kennedy). The Cuomo is Andrew, the state’s elected attorney general. The Kennedy—and the only choice on the list that qualifies as even marginally adventurous—is Caroline, a reticent and intelligent woman who made a splashy political début this year as a campaigner for Obama.

What if Governor Paterson, prompted by the squalor of his Illinois colleague’s maneuverings, were to put aside mundane calculations and take full advantage of his theoretically unfettered freedom of choice? The Senate was originally conceived as a sort of chamber of notables, but most of its members, over the years, have been notable mainly for their mediocrity. New York is full of interesting people. Want some suggestions? Try these, collected from an informal canvass—a baker’s dozen, in alphabetical order:

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, thoughtful and scholarly, would give the new President someone to shoot hoops with. Christiane Amanpour would be a slam dunk for the Foreign Relations Committee. The impossibly distinguished Vartan Gregorian is a one-man academy of arts, letters, and the humanities. Bill T. Jones, who doesn’t need words to make a speech, would make C-SPAN 2 worth watching. A non-dynastic Kennedy, the novelist William, would give upstate New York representation of the first order. Paul Krugman would provide ornery economic smarts. Arthur Laurents, conveniently, is already in Washington, directing the National Theatre revival of his “West Side Story.” If you doubt that Lou Reed knows politics, listen to his album “New York.” Felix Rohatyn is as senatorial as you can get without wearing a toga. Ed Sanders—poet, Pentagon levitator, classics scholar, founding member of the Fugs—is a political force in Woodstock, New York. Toni Morrison’s majestic voice would warm the Senate chamber. No one who ever spent the equivalent of two Senate terms in a complex, ceaselessly scrutinized job in New York has ever done it better than Joe Torre did as manager of the Yankees. Harold Varmus, the head of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and, like Morrison, a Nobel laureate, got lots of money from Congress for the National Institutes of Health when he ran them, during the nineteen-nineties. Perhaps he could do the same for New York—not that such petty considerations are worthy of this exercise.

All fantasy, of course. But not so fantastical as Rod Blagojevich’s notion that a seat in the United States Senate was his for the selling. ♦