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For this we had a revolution?

By Jack M. Balkin

Nicholas Kristoff has a marvelous a href="http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/17/for-senate-caroline-or-carolyn/"blogpost/a in the Times that captures some of my own disquiet about the prospect of Caroline Kennedy's emergence as the apparent "front-runner" as Hillary Clinton's successor in the Senate. He writes,br /br /blockquote.... frankly it is discouraging to see the way the system so often elevates particular families into politics, generation after generation, because of their names, bank accounts and Rolodexes. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are self-made exceptions, but we now have a president who rose in part because of who his father was, and there are many such cases. pAfter all, Beau Biden seems poised to succeed Joe Biden in the senate from Delaware, once his military service is completed. Ken Salazar?s senate seat from Colorado may be filled by his brother John. And here in New York State, we have a governor who is a second-generation politician who is choosing a senator from among such front-runners as a woman who is the daughter of a former president and a man who is the son of a former governor./p /blockquote pAnd, of course, Jeb Bush now seems poised to be the Republican candidate to succeed Mel Martinez to the Senate from Florida. I wonder if there are any other "democracies" around the world who have so much dynastic succession as part of their contemporary political order. "Isn?t that the kind of system we rebelled against in 1776? " Kristoff asks. Perhaps we're not really out of line; after all, there is always the exhilarating possibility of a Barack Obama or, even if less exhilarating to most of us, a Sarah Palin. br //p pI must also say, as a partisan Democrat, that I genuinely wonder whether Ms. Kennedy, whatever her strengths might be, would necessarily prevail over Peter King or some other well-financed Republican in 2010, who might well find a constituency to agree with another of Kristoff's comments, that Gov. Patterson is "said to be drawn to appointing Caroline Kennedy to the senate because she would be a good fund-raiser who could be reelected in 2010 and would cast a glow around him and his issues. But we don?t want a plutocracy, we want a democracy." br //p span class="fullpost"br //span

Full post as published by Balkinization on December 17, 2008 (boomark / email).