Posts Tagged ‘Legacy Appointments’

Why Caroline Kennedy?

Wednesday, December 17th, 2008

I don’t have anything against Caroline Kennedy. By all accounts she’s bright, hard-working, a good education-related fundraiser, and knowledgeable about Constitutional law. And if she ran to represent New York in the U.S. Senate, I (a New York City resident) might very well vote for her.

Nonetheless, I share Ron Kuby’s antipathy towards legacy appointments. And like Kuby, I wonder why so few liberals and progressives are speaking out against New York Governor David Paterson’s potential Caroline Kennedy appointment.

I believe that a U.S. Senate appointment should go to someone who has more demonstrably earned it and whose positions on a wide array of topics important to New Yorkers are better known. And that brings me to my latest limerick:

There once was a Kennedy daughter
Whose dad was a victim of slaughter.
She sought an appointment —
A Senate anointment,
And few but Ron Kuby, Esq. fought her.