Give It Up, Pinch

Even "Huffington Post" didn't like the smell of the New York Times hit piece on Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), speculating that the paper attacked her for representing the tobacco industry as a young attorney because it's still mad that Caroline Kennedy didn't get the Senate seat.

Plus The President Smokes: Film At 11

As a young lawyer, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) was assigned to represent Phillip Morris. While it's not actually a scandal, a New York Times expose goes on and on and on. It suggests that the Times hasn't gotten over Gillibrand being named to Hillary Clinton's seat instead of Caroline Kennedy.

Let It Go, Pinch!

A month later, and the New York Times is still investigating Caroline Kennedy not being named senator.

The Proof Is In The Sausage

The New York Times has two big stories about the state's new senator this morning. One is about how Gov. David Patterson muffed the selection process. The other is about its most excellent outcome, his choice of Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand, a feisty, intelligent, Mandarin-speaking centrist Democrat with Presidential ambitions who fits so perfectly with the Zeitgeist that it's hard to imagine Patterson considered anyone else. If she'd move to California, I'd vote for her.

Obviously, he did consider someone else, because he had to, namely Caroline Kennedy. The Times suggests he has suffered political damage as a result of the Senate derby. From this distance, it's hard to see why. Sure, it wasn't pretty, but politics usually isn't. The governor deserves props for keeping someone out of the Senate who wasn't qualified and who seems to have thought (along with many of her media and political boosters) that she could gain the office by pedigree.

Amid the Times's Saturday-morning sneers (what's really eating 'em, anyway?) is that Gillibrand has the support of the NRA and only votes for gay rights 80% of the time. Political insiders predict that when she no longer has to worry about what her relatively conservative rural upstate district thinks, she'll abandon her interesting mix of positions and become a decent, unimaginative, lockstep liberal just like Caroline Kennedy. We'll see. Says one of the downstate pols who think Gillibrand isn't liberal enough, yet:

“If we have royalty, it’s the Kennedys,” said Assemblyman Peter M. Rivera, a Bronx Democrat and chairman of the Assembly’s Puerto Rican/Hispanic Task Force. “The way she was treated, the backbiting and the attacks, it was insulting,” he said....

But we don't have royalty. We have politics. We have backbiting, attacks, and insults, and that's just the way we like it.

She Was For It Before She Was Against It

Caroline Kennedy decided she wanted to be a senator, then decided she didn't, then almost changed her mind, and then finally told the governor New York that she definitely doesn't.

Doublegate

Scandal #1: Sen. Clinton allegedly takes care of the Clinton Foundation's friend in Syracuse. Scandal #2: Caroline Kennedy asks, "Where's Syracuse?"

You Know, If It Had Been Palin...

Robert Nedelkoff on Caroline Kennedy's interview with the New York Times:

In what must have been a conversation lasting about 40 or 45 minutes, she uses “you know” no less than 138 times. Especially impressive are two occasions where she uses the words five different times in one sentence - or what would be a sentence, if it were not, in both cases, a chain of clauses with no grammatical conclusion....

And while it is true that quite a few Senators, past and present, have been as inarticulate as Ms. Kennedy, very few among them have used what facility of speech they had to assert, as Ms Kennedy more or less does in this interview, that they should be in the United States Senate, well, because they want to be there, whether or not there are more qualified candidates for the job.

Quote Of The Day

The AP asked Caroline Kennedy about the elections she hasn't voted in since registering to vote in New York in 1988.

I was really surprised and dismayed by my voting record. I'm glad it's been brought to my attention.

Would Two Kennedys In London Make A Right?

Steve Clemons, distinguished founding executive director of The Nixon Center, has written to friends promoting his intriguing idea that the PE should end the awkwardness created by Caroline Kennedy's senatorial ambitions by appointing her as ambassador to the Court of St. James's.

One potential problem is that her grandfather Joseph served in the same post, from which he notoriously resisted Winston Churchill's warnings about Nazi aggression, supported appeasement, tried to meet with Adolph Hitler without President Roosevelt's permission, and opposed wartime aid to Great Britain.

Londoners of a certain age may still wish to give an Ambassador Kennedy a piece of their minds.

Fancy Senator-Presumptive, Fancy House

Calling on Democrats, even as they massively expand government, to make sure it's FDR-style good government, Paul Krugman frowns:

And I have to say that Democrats are off to a bad start on that front. The attempted coronation of Caroline Kennedy as senator plays right into 40 years of conservative propaganda denouncing “liberal elites.” And surely I wasn’t the only person who winced at reports about the luxurious beach house the Obamas have rented, not because there’s anything wrong with the first family-elect having a nice vacation, but because symbolism matters, and these weren’t the images we should be seeing when millions of Americans are terrified about their finances.

Caroline Kennedy: He's Definitely Against It

Leon Wieseltier:

In a society as wounded as our own, there is something repellent about the assertions of elitism. Its most awful expression, of course, is the acquiescence of almost everybody in the dynastic ambitions of the Kennedys. I can almost not imagine a more obvious mutilation of the meritocratic ideal than the appointment of Caroline Kennedy to the United State Senate. A Senate seat is a...valuable thing, you just don't give it away for nothing. But of course it will not be given away for nothing: the princess and her family will be delighted to pay for it.

No More Toots For Yoots

Pre-Nov. 4 conventional wisdom on U.S. youth: Tired of politics as usual; hope of the future. New CW on youth: Figures of fun because they're not sure who Caroline Kennedy is.

Discreet Caroline

Big breakthrough: After several unsatisfactory meetings with the media during her exploration of upstate New York this week, Senator-presumptive Caroline Kennedy's staff (how come she's got a staff already?) provides written answers to questions from the New York Times.