On December 1, 2008, Hillary Clinton was nominated to be Secretary of State in the Obama administration. If she gets confirmed her seat in the US Senate as a junior senator for New York will have to be filled by someone nominated by the New York governor, David Paterson. It has not taken very long for the candidates, many of them elected officials, to express interest in the seat. Among the candidates there is a very well known one, Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of the former president John Kennedy. And there is where the problem arises. Were she just an unknown candidate nobody would have read much in the papers about her. But coming from such a prominent family, the closest the Americans have to royalty, one cannot open a paper or read a blog without seeing her name. She has her fans and her detractors but most of people believe that once she declared her interest in the post and put herself forward to replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate there was a great possibility that she would be the one Governor Paterson would select. Against those who are talking about nepotism and, as I read in Politico, saying that “ The U.S. Senate could end up looking like an American version of the House of Lords” are the ones that claim that “Hillary Clinton came out of First Ladyhood and Arkansas and scooped her job away from other more deserving New Yorkers,” as the New York Times columnist Gail Collins wrote. Of course they are somewhat comparing two different approaches to get the seat. Hillary Clinton was elected to the Senate by the people of New York on November 7, 2000 and reelected in 2006. Were Caroline Kennedy to get the senator seat Hillary leaves vacant she would have just been selected by the governor, not by the people. Once selected, and under state law, Ms. Kennedy would have to run and win in 2010, to finish out the last two years of Mrs. Clinton’s term, and again in 2012, to win a term of her own.
As it was written in Politico, I fear that “If she wants it, I don’t see how anyone will stop her.” And I believe it is wrong. Let Caroline Kennedy run in 2012 if she still believes that is what she wants. Then the people will be able to choose the most able person for the seat.
If Governor Paterson selects her now, the perception would be that in a way, the US seems to be running away from a democracy and turning its government reins to a selected group of people of influential, well connected and well to do people.
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