Senate Seat Roulette

The once unlikely pairing of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton together in the Executive Branch has been the occasion for a bit of post-election drama surrounding two equally unlikely appointments to their now open seats in the U.S. Senate.

Despite a five-year investigation into his conduct that he apparently knew about, Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois was recorded by investigators on a number of occasions as he planned to peddle to the highest bidder Mr. Obama's empty Senate seat. A Who's Who of aspiring appointees ran from the prospect like it was the plague -- all, that is, except Mr. Roland Burris. The former Illinois attorney general and three-time losing candidate for the job Mr. Blagojevich now holds got the call and, without hesitation, accepted the appointment, dropping his own doubtful talk about the governor of a week earlier and insisting that his appointment was lawful and untainted. The Senate Democrats, in a rare show of unanimity, rose with one voice to condemn the move. Mr. Blagojevich had defied their warning not to make any appointment from his now undeserved office. They would not, they had said, seat any appointee he could name. The press, predictably, crowed about Mr. Blagojevich's clever meaness in naming an African-American, noting that it would be difficult for Democrats to refuse to seat someone who would be, with Mr. Obama's exit, the only black Senator in this U.S. Congress. Op/Ed writers enjoyed the political gamesmanship involved as the Governor, presumably on his way out, left the Senate an IED (improvised explosive device) to remember him by.

Indeed, last week, it looked like Blagojevich's "give-'em-a-no-win-choice" strategy was working. Senator Diane Feinstein, former Mayor of San Francisco, who can't afford to be viewed (even inaccurately) as anything but supportive of the disenfranchised, was the first to cave in. She was soon followed by Ms. Pelosi and the Majority Leader himself, who are now going about the business of defusing the stand off.

No doubt Mr. Burris will, sooner or later, gain his seat. The current Illinois attorney general will be persuaded to sign off on Mr. Burris' credentials after the affair becomes a little less "front page." But the pundits will have missed the point, as they often do. The issue here, as former attorney general Burris well knows, is due process. Mr. Blagojevich has been accused of, arrested for and, since the Burris appointment, impeached for alleged crimes. He has not yet been convicted, either in the Illinois Senate or any court. He is presumed innocent until proven guilty. The appointment, barring evidence of some kind of "pay-to-play deal, is perfectly legal, all the potential quid pro quo A-listers have disappeared, leaving only Mr. Burris, who until Mr. Bladojevich's arrest, was not on anybody's list.

While the Senate certainly has the right to request that Mr. Blagojevich, for the good of the nation and his office, not taint the empty seat by making an appointment at this time, he still, at the moment has the legal right and, as he noted in his defiant talk to reporters, may indeed have "a duty" to make the appointment. Mr. Burris could have refused, again for the good of the nation, to accept the appointment (and I frankly wish he had), but he has no legal obligation to do so. Of course, Mr. Blagojevich could have saved us all a lot of trouble (and the taxpayer's money it'll cost to remove him) and simply resigned. But he did not, and it is his right to demand a fair trial.

One of the downsides of a democracy, in which we pledge allegiance to a system of government by law rather than men is that some men (and women) always find ways to exploit those laws to their personal benefit or to the detriment of those they don't like — or just for spite — in blatant disregard for the public good.

So Mr. Blagoyevich has had his 15 minutes of defiance and no doubt enjoyed it, but he will also have his day (no doubt stretching into months or even years) in court. And Mr. Burris has seized the day, counting on legal precedent and not minding at all that his appointment will owe something to the governor's callous willingness to play the handy race card. Burris, too, will have his day in the court of public opinion. He will, no doubt, be one of the most watched new senators in history. A minor mistake for Mr. Burris will be a media event. In all the furor, no evidence has surfaced that Mr. Burris has ever sunk to the normal low of Illinois politics. He's handled the negative attention with reasonable grace. Yes, he wanted to be a U.S. Senator badly enough to risk this way of getting the seat. But that just makes him graspingly ambitious. What politician couldn't be accused of that? Under intense scrutiny, he'll have to be a model junior senator. And if that happens, it could be evidence that our political system, by revering rule by law and valuing a free press, could ultimately protect the public good.

On a very different note, New York Governor David Paterson will soon discharge his duty to fill the Senate seat vacated by Ms. Clinton, Mr. Obama's choice for Secretary of State. ("Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.") No-one's running from this appointment. But one candidate among the slew of aspirants has eclipsed all others: Caroline Kennedy, daughter of John, niece of Bobby and Ted, and a practicing lawyer, has the pundits calling to mind Camelot, that mythic (and largely illusory) moniker for the tragically shortened JFK presidency.

After consciously avoiding the public eye for decades, Ms. Kennedy now seeks it in an unabashedly public campaign to win the seat, despite the fact that there will be no vote. To its credit, the allegedly left-leaning press has not shied away from asking important questions about Ms. Kennedy's qualifications, albeit with less glee than that with which they went after recent vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Early on, Ms. Kennedy has proved equally unable to respond with substantive answers. She was, she says, inspired by Mr. Obama to enter public service. She is, she says, up to the job, you know, because, well, you know, she really wants to help people, you know? Although she conspicuously lacks the charisma (and the Basten accent) of her forebearers, liberals can't be blamed for getting misty-eyed about her, now that Ted's bout with brain cancer ensures that the long political legacy of the Kennedy men is soon to end.

If he appoints Ms. Kennedy, Gov. Paterson might merit the criticism that will surely come. There are seasoned pols far more qualified to handle the Senate machinery than she. No doubt, she wouldn't be in the hunt at all, had she not so famous a name. Unlike Mr. Obama and Ms. Palin, who were pointedly criticized for their relative lack of national government experience, Ms. Kennedy has never won or lost an election nor has she logged a single day of service in any government office. She even admits to having neglected to vote in several elections.

One thing in her favor is that she is a woman. Paterson is under some pressure to fill Ms. Clinton's seat with another woman, and the Kennedy name has the gravitas, at least in the Democratic Party, to fill the bill. More importantly, she is a Kennedy woman. Kennedy women, history will testify, have always been better people than Kennedy men. While Papa Joe made most of his fortune running rum during prohibition and, like some Mario Puzo Godfather, grooming his namesake for public office, his wife, Rose, quietly and with little fanfare, spent a part of his ill-gotten gain championing such ventures as the Special Olympics. Although young Joe died in the war, John came back a wounded PT boat commander and, as President, proved to be an inspiring figurehead. But JFK also oversaw the infamous Bay of Pigs affair, which led to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which took us to the brink of nuclear war and ensured the Cold War would smolder for decades. Then he got us into Vietnam. Meanwhile, Jacqueline gave the title First Lady a luster it had never had before and has not had since. She bore her grief at his death and endured the public revelations of her husband's compulsive womanizing and Mafia connections, as the fabric of Camelot finally unraveled, with equal dignity.

Like the women who preceded her, and quite unlike the men, Caroline Kennedy has no affairs in her dossier. She has no Chappaquiddick to live down. There are no Mafia connections (the dons her father's father first befriended are long dead, and those JFK secretly employed are either incarcerated, living under assumed names in the desert Southwest, or too old to care).

After avoiding for so long the political arena that killed both her father and Uncle Bobby, she has stepped up to the plate. Whatever else one might say, that takes courage. By all accounts, she has quietly earned some respect (in New York!) for her activities in education reform.

If Gov. Paterson appoints her, those who expect the imminent return of a Camelot that never was will ultimately be disappointed. But the rest of us might be surprised. She owes no special interest group. She's made no promises she can't keep. She does not seem driven by personal ambition or lust for money (that, she already has) or power. It might well be the case that an ordinary do-gooder, after a period of neglect, has indeed been inspired to public service by a sense of duty and an honest desire to help out. That alone would be a pleasant change.

She did not choose her name. And she did not ask to bear the weight of dynastic expectations. But it's not beyond the realm of possibility that the oft-tarnished Kennedy name, in the person of Caroline, might finally merit the respect it has for so long commanded.