I feel bad for Caroline Kennedy

[Stinky The Clown]

I have not taken a strong side in the yes/no debate about her senatorial prospects. I have said only that I would be okay if she got it and I would be okay if someone else did.

She has spent her entire life being quietly helpful to causes that matter to us. She is private and, in that sense, unpolished on the public stage. I actually believe she was pushed into this rather than seeking it. I don't know that to be fact, but it is what i have concluded given all the yakking that's been done about it from all quarters. Her foray upstate a few weeks ago was a case in point. She was less articulate than normal expectations might demand and she just didn't seem to have her heart in it.

I'm still okay if she got to be a senator. I don't think she will, though.

Yeah, I know. She's a grownup and she showed herself to be (biblically) ignorant of what she would face from the media - and the New York media at that.

But I still like her and hope she can regain her footing and get back to doing what she does - quiet good works. I would be quite happy to see her but once a year. At The Kennedy Center. Giving out the Profiles In Courage Awards.

[TahitiNut]

1. The media and political sharks sure have been in full frenzy.

:puke:

[ProudToBeLiberal]

2. well she shouldn't have offered her name for consideration

if she wanted to avoid the scrutiny...

[Hugabear]

10. How many other Senatorial candidates face the same scrutiny?

If her last name had not been KENNEDY, she wouldn't have been facing half the scrutiny she's gotten. At least not on a national level!

[Thothmes]

15. IMO, if her last name was not Kennedy

she would never have been given the most remote consideration for the Senate seat.

[Occam Bandage]

16. Are you kidding me? CK got the kid glove treatment.

She was monumentally unqualified, had an embarrassingly underinformed view of the issues, and was completely and utterly tempermentally unsuited for the job. She was given absolutely every chance by both the public and the media, entirely because of her last name. Unsurprisingly, when it became clear that she had nothing to offer New York but her last name, people grew less forgiving.

Anyway, how you can claim that a candidate that managed to have nonpayment of taxes go unnoticed until she dropped out, and who was considered a viable choice for high office despite her complete lack of anything remotely resembling experience, was in fact too scrutinized is utterly beyond me.

[NashVegas]

19. This Time? Not a Single One

[ShortnFiery]

3. I don't. Caroline has always been a private person - she should have KNOWN her own temperament

and not succumbed to the desires of other members in her family.

Yes, Caroline is highly intelligent but that alone does not make a savvy political leader.

[EFerrari]

4. She'll be fine. With everything that's happening, it says more about the whore media

than about Kennedy that they're going with this.

Hello? What about Gaza? What about Iraq, remember, Iraq? There are elections all over Latin America, hello? What about layoffs here at home? What about all those peanut recalls reported by the FDA? What's going on in Afghanistan?

It's easy and the presstitutes excel at easy.

[bigtree]

5. I feel terrible about it.

. . . you got it about right, 'cept, I'd like to see her more than once a year.

[McCamy Taylor]

6. She can run for office with a "tax and nanny" problem and it will be no problem.

It is only an issue with an appointment. She just needs to wait for the next vacancy for an office that she wants. If she wins an election with those issues out in the open, she can tell the world "they people have spoken".

[marlakay]

7. A lot of really good people aren't in politics for the same

reason. They would make great decisions for their state but lack the skills in public speaking and the kiss ass you have to do meeting with tons of groups to get elected. Alot of smoozing.

I think Caroline is one of those. She would have done a great job behind the scenes fighting for her state but she needed alot of practice for interviews and smoozing. Its not her normal style.

It still feels like they came down extra hard on her.

[4 t 4]

8. me too n/t

[kestrel91316]

9. H2S, you changed your name..........sob.

But the new one is easy to remember since that's what some of us already knew you as, lol.

What does Sparkley say about this, though???

[Stinky The Clown]

11. It was her idea!

I wanted the simpler Stinky. She said that would be ambiguous and would have a whole different inference from Stinky the Clown. I agreed. Stinky and Clown are somewhat dichotomous. I love to make people laugh and a true codgerly old grouch ..... more dichotomy.

I was pushing her to use her full, formal name: Sparkly Fairy Princess.

[Flubadubya]

12. Caroline has shown true grit with this decision and I applaud her...

For whatever reason she chose to eschew this post, I think it took real guts to do it. She may have felt that she was not fully competent or qualified for the job, or, that it might compromise her cherished sense of privacy, or, whatever. Nonetheless she did not hoggishly snap up the opportunity like so many of Bushie's sycophantic appointees seeking a sinecure (e.g. Brownie et. al.) just to have "Senator" in front of her name and all the power and prestige that comes with it.

To me this shows a rare humility usually desparately lacking in politicians. Perhaps she really is no politician, but she obviously resisted the temptation of the notable title and presumed honor the position would confer upon her.

More power to her... in all and any of her future endeavors! :hug:

[Occam Bandage]

18. "Nonetheless she did not hoggishly snap up the opportunity."

Uh, yeah, she did. She went full-bore-ahead in an unprecedented public and private lobbying campaign to pressure the Governor of New York into appointing someone completely lacking in any political experience to the office of Senator. She then withdrew suddenly and unexpectedly under mysterious circumstances in the middle of the night, with her team offering several contradictory reasons for it.

I don't see "humility." I see a sheltered, self-absorbed person who believed herself entitled to a Senate seat through birthright, and who came across a last-minute wall somewhere in the process and bailed rather than have to confront the issue publicly.

[CTyankee]

20. I'm sorry, but she should have held herself to a higher standard than this.

She has an obligation to obey the law and especially if she wants to enhance Obama's administration. She does him no favors by holding herself above the laws that apply to everyone else. Her behavior is a huge embarrassment to him and a huge disappointment to me and others who believed she was better than this and supported her appointment for the Senate.

How can you aspire to being a law maker if you are yourself a scofflaw? Isn't that the height of hypocrisy?

[mmonk]

13. I agree.

[Occam Bandage]

14. I don't. She brought this all on herself. She *lobbied* for this.

"Oh, poor Caroline Kennedy" is no better than "Oh, poor Sarah Palin."

[NashVegas]

17. I Think This Was a Good Lesson For Her

I was okay with her getting the seat for two reasons:

1. It was to be expected she'd be a dependable vote for the Obama admin

2. If she ran and won in 2010, I expected her to be groomed to run for POTUS down the line. That's important because I believe Republicans will learn from their mistake and put up a viable female candidate in the not-too-distant future. History has shown that every single female breakthrough we've had in these matters has come through nepotism + goodwill.

If Paterson wanted to name someone else, I was okay with that, too, but what's not okay was all the leaking to the Daily News, champion of the anti-Caroline brigade. Everyone with half a brain knew CK was Obama's hand-picked candidate and the time to challenge that was when the Blago shit was blowing up. Instead, CK was left to hang her ass out the window for six weeks.


Still. All the negative press about her in the past 6 weeks was nothing compared to what HRC was put through last year and though she tried to be nice about it, no doubt her (and her uncle's) decision to back Obama was helpful to those looking to plant negative stories about HRC.