While Rod Blagojevich’s pay to play scandal involving Obama’s soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat in Illinois has just broken, Ross Douthat does a nifty demolition job on the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus’ case for Caroline Kennedy to replace Hillary’s New York Senate Seat:
I don’t know about Jesse Ventura, but I find Schwarzenegger and Sonny Bono’s pre-political careers as self-made showbiz entrepreneurs – to say nothing of Jon Corzine’s career in finance – much more impressive than anything Caroline Kennedy has ever done. Her life has been dedicated to worthy pursuits, by and large, but most of her accomplishments (fundraising for New York public schools, editing essay collections in honor of her father, etc.) are classic “born on third base” endeavors – laudable enough without being terribly impressive. And all of the names on Marcus’s list actually submitted themselves to the democratic process on their way to the Senate, the House, and the California’s Governor’s Mansion; for an appointment to fill a vacant seat (especially a safe vacant seat), the bar ought to be set a bit higher than “she’s more qualified than Sonny Bono.”
But Caroline’s case is easily made with the just four simple words: She’s not Fran Dresher.
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