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The prospect of Caroline Kennedy's appointment to the Senate to replace Secretary of State Designate Hillary Clinton has created some weak (VERY weak) support and some lame (VERY lame) opposition. There are, in fact, good reasons to support the appointment and good reasons to oppose it, it's just that almost none of the punditry and other public comment has expressed it.
That is because almost none of the responses understand what the Senate was designed to accomplish.
Some of the opposition on the liberal/left, led by Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake and picked up by a few others, is at least ideologically consistent with the left-populist or Progressive (note the uppercase "P") view. I think it's wrong, but at any rate it's consistent. But the general mockery of many conservatives, is both wrong and inconsistent with an authentically conservative--I daresay Originalist--understanding of the American System.
In Politico, Republican stenographer, er, "reporter," Charles Mahtesian complains that:
The U.S. Senate could end up looking like an American version of the House of Lords . . . .
Well. DOH. That's the point of an Upper House in a legislature. While it is true that the Founders of our Republic and the Framers of our Constitution did not want to exactly replicate the British House of Lords, they certainly saw it as the model for the United States Senate with a few local adaptations. And I think it's fair to say that Alexander Hamilton pretty much DID want to replicate the Lords:
Give all power to the many, they will oppress the few. Give all power to the few, they will oppress the many. Both therefore ought to have power, that each may defend itself agst. the other. To the want of this check we owe our paper money, installment laws &c. To the proper adjustment of it the British owe the excellence of their Constitution. Their house of Lords is a most noble institution. Having nothing to hope for by a change, and a sufficient interest by means of their property, in being faithful to the national interest, they form a permanent barrier agst. every pernicious innovation, whether attempted on the part of the Crown or of the Commons.
James Madison was equally strong in his opinions of an Upper House and the style of person who should serve in such a body:
A people deliberating in a temperate moment, and with the experience of other nations before them, on the plan of Govt. most likely to secure their happiness, would first be aware, that those chargd. with the public happiness, might betray their trust. An obvious precaution agst. this danger wd. be to divide the trust between different bodies of men, who might watch & check each other. In this they wd. be governed by the same prudence which has prevailed in organizing the subordinate departments of Govt., where all business liable to abuses is made to pass thro' separate hands, the one being a check on the other. It wd. next occur to such a people, that they themselves were liable to temporary errors, thro' want of information as to their true interest, and that men chosen for a short term, & employed but a small portion of that in public affairs, might err from the same cause. This reflection wd. naturally suggest that the Govt. be so constituted, as that one of its branches might have an oppy. of acquiring a competent knowledge of the public interests Another reflection equally becoming a people on such an occasion, wd. be that they themselves, as well as a numerous body of Representatives, were liable to err also, from fickleness and passion. A necessary fence agst. this danger would be to select a portion of enlightened citizens, whose limited number, and firmness might seasonably interpose agst. impetuous councils..
The argument, then, that Caroline should run for election, or that having run for previous elective office is a qualification, is fundamentally nongermane. Officials trained and experienced in the House of Representatives learn both the necessity of immediate response to issues as they arise and then tend to to respond to the raw majoritarianism that rules that House of Congress (appropriately, I should add). But neither of those approaches is supposed to apply to the Senate. Having been a Member of the Lower House is actually closer to a disqualification than a qualification. The Senate is not supposed to be simply a glorified House of Representatives; that's especially true for this particular Senate seat, where neither of the two immediate predecessors, Pat Moynihan and Hillary Clinton, had ever held elective office before taking that New York Senate seat.
It's as if the quiet life Caroline has lived for the most part since her childhood is a bad thing. Nah uh. It's a good thing. Those are precisely the kinds of lives the Founders and Framers expected and desired prospective Senators to have lived. Does Caroline appear to possess a steady and settled personality? Of course. Does Caroline have a wide view of public issues? Of course. Examine the wide variety of issues involved in the winners of the JFK Library’s "Profiles in Courage" Awards, which she has administered since their inception (trivia: What Obama cabinet pick is on that list?). Is Caroline comfortable in the corridors of power? Of course. She's spent her entire life in and out of those corridors--and up and down those steps, as the photo above of her father's funeral demonstrates. Stop right here for a moment while I demolish this "dynasty" silliness.
There are, in fact, areas of public office where family-dynastic politics should be avoided. Municipal politics, for example, where family-dominated machines may grow increasingly corrupt or inefficient as bureaucratic custom becomes entrenched and decrepit. Quincy, Massachusetts, for example. Or take trade union politics. The recently deceased Ron Carey did a thousand times more for the Teamsters than the guy from a famous family who replaced him ever did. But the United States Senate is NOT one of those areas.
Family dynasties are an asset to the Senate. Senators are supposed to take the long view. They are supposed to think from fifty years in the past to fifty years in the future, and there's no better way to know that a Senator is taking the requisite long view than to know that that view in as imbued with family history as it is with public history. The Udall cousins, for instance, now hold two Senate seats, Colorado and New Mexico. But if there is an issue that almost by definition requires a long view, oh, say ..... the Environment .... is it not a very fine thing to know that two United States Senators were born of families that have been public officials of leading concern on the environment for two generations?
Ultimately, all this folderol over the possession of a particular United States Senate seat from New York is laughably ironic considering the history of New York's seats going back over two hundred years. First you got Rufus King. Good buddy of Alexander Hamilton and representative to both the Continental Congress and Federal Constitutional Convention from the Great Commonwealth of Massachusetts. But, unfortunately for King and his ally, after ratifying the Constitution, the state legislature in Massachusetts (The General Court, we quaintly call it) decided they'd had enough of King and refused to elect him to the United States Senate. So Hamilton had him take a stagecoach down Interstate 95 and had him elected from New York. Which reminds me of James Buckley, who, because of disunity among liberals and Democrats, split the defense and won the seat in the election in 1972 even though everyone knew he lived in Connecticut.
But my favorite is Roscoe Conkling. By a combination of circumstances both political and tragic, his protégé in the corrupt Albany Machine (Republican, the corrupt Democratic machine was Tammany Hall) Chester A. Arthur became, er, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!!!! Then, in what might be termed a "Blagovichian" maneuver, he appealed to his former creature for all kinds of patronage and other such goodies then in the gift of the President. However, in a maneuver that might be termed "Obamian," Arthur merely offered his appreciation for the mentoring and refused Conkling's demand to replace the Port Collector of New York with Conkling's preferred designee. But then, in a maneuver that we might term "Liebermanian" since the Senate at the times was evenly divided, Conkling decided to resign from the Senate, thereby throwing control to the Democrats, then return to Albany and have the legislature there re-elect him on his own sweet time while Arthur stewed over blocked legislation.
Ooops. The New York state legislature was evidently more scared of the President of the United States than a resigned United States Senator because they rejected Conkling and soon elected a loyal Republican to replace Conkling, ending his career as a corrupt politician--of course, that opened the door to his career as a corrupt corporate counsel for the Railroads, but that's another story.
Sheesh. To hear the whining, you'd think some "tradition" of ordinary succession to that seat had been violated. Huh? While the Class 3 New York seat (King and Conkling's) held by Charles Schumer has a relatively pedestrian recent history, the last time the Class 1 seat had an ordinary turnover was exactly fifty years ago when Kenneth Keating won it in 1958. After that, Robert F. Kennedy, from Massachusetts, first elected office; Charles Goodell, appointed to replace the assassinated RFK; James Buckley, from Connecticut, first elected office; D. Patrick Moynihan, first elected office; Hillary Clinton, from Illinois, Arkansas and Washington, D,C., first elected office. And folks are tut-tutting because Caroline Kennedy is under consideration for that seat?!?! Are you kidding me? Caroline would be continuing the tradition for that seat, not violating it.
Caroline Kennedy is classy, she has wide acquaintance with issues of public moment, she has as long a view of American politics as is possible for a 52-year-old to have, and she has the United States Senate in her bones. If anything, she's OVER-qualified for the Senate in the terms the Founders and Framers expected, not under-qualified as Joe Klein superficially argues.
Finally, although I'm something of lib/lefty/progressive type on most current political issues, I'm also something of an Originalist and "conservative" on issues of Constitutional structure. One of the worst blots on the Constitution is the XVIIth Amendment, a supposedly "progressive" measure that removed the election of Senators from state legislatures and made it a matter of popular will. It's been all downhill ever since.
But the current spate of Senate vacancies due to movement into the Cabinet of the incoming Administration offers up an opportunity to do an end-around on the XVIIth Amendment, especially with the Illinois vacancy which could conceivably not be filled until 2010 at the current rate. The Governors of each of the states with vacancies should request that their state legislatures recommend a single candidate to fill the vacancy, and agree that if the legislatures do so in a timely manner, to appoint that candidate. That's certainly a way out of the Illinois gridlock, and there's no reason why it wouldn't work in Colorado, Delaware and New York. Since the Democrats control at least one house in each those legislatures and all four governor's mansions, Democrats in the Senate shouldn't have to worry about their Senate majority being weakened.
At the very least, the Illinois Governor and state legislature should consider this idea since at the moment it appears to be the only way that seat will get filled at all. The Governor and legislative leaders agree to the deal publicly. Candidates announce, everyone takes a few days in Springfield for meetings and lobbying, maybe hearings. Then they pass a "Sense of the House" Resolution--legislative boilerplate with the whereases and therefores and "Be it hereby resolved that it is the sense of this house that [insert name here] be appopinted to fill the vacancy in the United States Senate for Illinois." Then the Governor makes the appointment and the new Senator takes office without the taint of Blagoyavich's criminal investigation.
If it works, maybe we could start a movement to get that monstrosity of an Amendment repealed. Join me, everyone, in this movement that has absolutely no chance of ever succeeding!
