Who needs qualifications when your name is Kennedy?
Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg knows this better than most. It is
no coincidence that her last name has morphed from Schlossberg
back to Kennedy just as she embarks upon a career in politics.
The New York Times reports that the heiress to Camelot
has decided to pursue the Senate seat that Hillary Clinton will
vacate upon confirmation as secretary of state. She will
reportedly express her interest in the seat directly to New York
Gov. David Paterson, who decides Clinton’s replacement.
But what, other than nepotism and nostalgia, would prompt
Paterson to seriously consider John F. Kennedy’s daughter as a
replacement for Hillary Clinton? Even Congressman Gary Ackerman,
a liberal Democrat from Queens, pleads ignorance of her
qualifications for the office beyond “that she has name
recognition — but so does JLo.”
Schlossberg’s résumé is not thin but confusing. It is laden with
positions devoid of responsibility. Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg
sits on foundation boards, places her name (as her dad did) on
books, and serves as an adviser, whatever that entails, to the
Harvard Institute of Politics. But one would be hard-pressed to
determine, precisely, what she does for a living: With her
Onassis/Kennedy fortune, she has never had to work. Other than
trade her famous maiden name for honors, what has she done to
earn appointment as a U.S. senator?
One could forgive Schlossberg for the sense of entitlement. It
runs in the family. No qualifications, many disqualifications —
the job is yours. That is the Kennedy way.
Grandfather Joe Kennedy, who made millions in insider trading and
other stock swindles, somehow greased his way into becoming the
first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Robert
F. Kennedy Sr. had never tried a single case in a courtroom
before President John Kennedy appointed him attorney general, and
the fact that they were brothers was an obvious conflict of
interest. Schlossberg’s uncle Ted had never held a paying job,
save for a two-year stint in the army, before election to the
Senate in 1962.
So magical was the Kennedy name in postwar Massachusetts that an
unrelated political neophyte who worked in a Gillette razor-blade
factory’s stockroom and was blessed with the name “John F.
Kennedy” actually won election to several terms as state
treasurer. If the high-school dropout John Francis
Kennedy could crudely parlay the last name into an undeserved
office, then actual relatives of the real John F.
Kennedy — his brother Ted, his nephews Joe and Pat, and now, his
daughter Caroline — certainly could too.
Save for a two-year respite upon John Kennedy’s elevation from
the Senate to the presidency, when the incoming president
pressured the governor of Massachusetts to award his Senate seat
to his Harvard roommate as a placeholder until brother Ted met
the Constitution’s age requirements, a Kennedy has served in the
Senate for the last 56 years. In the mid-1960s, Ted and Bobby
Kennedy became the first brothers to serve together in the Senate
since the early 19th century. With the youngest Kennedy now
becoming the family elder, and suffering from brain cancer, the
appointment of the 51-year-old Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg to
the Senate presumably guarantees a Kennedy seat in the upper
chamber for years to come.
In Illinois, Governor Rod Blagojevich allegedly attempted to sell
the Senate seat left vacant by President-Elect Barack Obama to
the highest bidder. In New York, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg
makes a hereditary claim on a seat currently held by Hillary
Clinton, herself the beneficiary of her famous last name. Though
birthright claims upon political offices do not offend the law as
monetary claims upon political offices do, the fact that they
offend democratic sensibilities may be enough to jettison
Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg’s grab at the Senate seat once
occupied by her uncle Bobby. Or, given her family’s successful
track record of trading the Kennedy name for high office, it
might not.
Forty-six years ago, Schlossberg’s uncle Ted was publicly
humiliated by Edward McCormack in a debate preceding
Massachusetts’s 1962 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate.
McCormack, a nephew of the speaker of the U.S. House of
Representatives who had served two terms as the Bay State’s
attorney general and had presided over Boston’s city council,
resented the Kennedy way of starting at the top. If his
opponent’s name were Edward Moore, McCormack told a packed,
sweaty basketball gymnasium in South Boston, instead of Edward
Moore Kennedy, his candidacy would be a joke. Nearly a
half-century later, New Yorkers should be saying the same thing
about Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg.
