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Caroline: The Reasons Why
Ida Mae Astute/ABC/Retna Ltd.
The baying of the press for Caroline to justify her desire to occupy Hillary’s seat in the Senate is about the exchange in fairy dust between herself and Barack Obama.
Caroline Kennedy’s week-long radio silence about her candidacy for the New York Senate seat has only increased the media clamor for her to explain herself. Her declaration to The New York Times that “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think I would be the best” hasn't done the trick. As the Albany Times Union commented yesterday, “Her problem, in essence, is the ‘why’ question. She hasn't come close to answering it.”
I have my own theory of why Caroline wants it—or, at least, why she suddenly emerged from her Upper East Side walk-in closet after 51 years.
No wonder the Republicans love to compare her to the still widely popular Sarah Palin, who is pure animal protein to Caroline’s endive salad.
Her default state of mind is captured by that affectless voice we hear on the AP tape and its self-defeating y’knows—dozens of them in less than two and a half minutes. To a British ear, it’s the same low-energy stance of the younger generation of the Royal Family or the grander British aristocracy—which, in American terms, is exactly what she is.
Take a tour of a British stately home with the laid-back heir or heiress to all the Gainsboroughs and Reynoldses on the satin walls (“This is the Red Room, yah, where, y’know, the Duke of Marlborough was, I dunno, like, arrested, we just roller skate here now”) and you will experience the same gusts of disinterest that Caroline displayed in Rochester when she visited the Democratic headquarters there recently.
Local officials eagerly ushered the prospective senator into a conference room known as the Kennedy Room, adorned with pictures of (what a drag) her father, mother, and younger brother, and Caroline herself as a little girl. “She never responded to the pictures,” the mayor of Rochester, Robert Duffy, told The New York Times. “She looked and perhaps nodded. She never said a word about it.” (To be fair, Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, a Democrat from upstate New York who has endorsed Caroline, noted that Kennedy’s reaction to the pictures was to say, “Oh, that’s very nice.”)
Caroline’s whole demeanor, with its combination of slouchiness and snippiness (also very royal) when her rank is challenged (“Have you guys ever thought about writing for, like, a woman’s magazine or something?...I thought you were the crack political team here”), proclaims the sad truth of her life: that being the heir to a legacy fraught with so much tragedy is a heavy-hearted chore—especially when you have no real visceral feel for the spirit that forged it. All those meetings with the great and the good at the Kennedy Library. All those requests from new biographers for interviews to turn down. All those battening social climbers, from as early as kindergarten, when the play-dates were about the moms who wanted to meet Jackie. All the lies—or, worse, truths—written about your family. It was, y’know, draining.
No wonder the Republicans love to compare her to the still widely popular Sarah Palin, who is pure animal protein to Caroline’s endive salad. (Palin’s own interview debacles were from ignorance, which is less off-putting, it seems, than that new curse word in politics, reserve.)
Caroline has been raised all her life as a Bouvier, not a Kennedy—and a reticent female Bouvier at that. She’s not a swashbuckler like Black Jack Bouvier, Jackie’s dashing, dissolute father. Caroline has led a parochial, socially timid life centered on Manhattan’s most cosseted enclave, remote from the competitive cut and thrust of local or national politics, the blood-coursing challenges of winning and losing that defined her father’s side of the clan. Life with Jackie was all about hiding.
But something happened last January as Caroline was pushed by her Uncle Teddy to come out for Obama. The Kennedys, blindsided by the success of pea-picking, penny-ante, polyester-wearing provincials like the Carters and the Clintons, were never all that delighted when Bill Clinton’s wife commandeered RFK’s old Senate seat. Keeping Hillary out of the White House pulled Caroline off the sidelines as much as enthusiasm for Obama, who so shrewdly and assiduously courted the Kennedy blessing. Some of Caroline’s veiled dislike of Hillary was perhaps also vigor envy. No self-doubt in Hillary. No fear of the fight.
With the press in a swoon calling young Sen. Obama the next JFK (and with Ted Sorensen actually around as a kind of Hobbit figure), Caroline, I expect, fell into a strange time warp. For the first time, she really tasted the rawness, the exhaustion, and the exhilaration of the family business. She discovered what a race for the White House feels like in the flesh, not just on tape or in books or in dinner table reminiscences. Suddenly she was with inspiring JFK in West Virginia and Los Angeles, with magical RFK in Indiana and Oregon. At Obama’s convention in Denver, as thousands watched and cheered with tears streaking their faces, she was at center stage, catapulting past her cousins to her new place just behind Ted in the line of Kennedy succession.
Of course, Obama fell in love with having the JFK fairy dust heaped on him too. (As the old Aretha Franklin song goes, Who’s Zoomin’ Who?) Every other Democratic contender since 1968 has yearned for the Kennedy anointment as The Next One. Gary Hart actually got to fiddling with his suit jacket pocket the same way JFK did, and John Edwards—oh, how John Edwards wanted them to say it about him! That stuff will go to your head! Even a lowlife like Rod Blagojevich thought the shock of hair might confer the magic.
Obama was different; his glamour was his own. He wasn’t some Bob Forehead type, trying to be “Kennedyesque.” He was as brilliant a wordsmith as herfather’s speechwriters. Besides, he was African-American. Paradoxically, these qualities made him the perfect successor as Camelot caretaker. Arise, Sir Barack!
Obama, in return, knew he owed the Kennedys. He didn’t just let Caroline hang around the plane and the hotel suite; he made her one of the “vetters” on his veep choice committee. (Nice for her, too, that she would be able to not choose Hillary.) Like everything else about Caroline, from her finances to why she wants the job, her actual role in that process—undoubtedly handled in reality by the usual firm of Axelrod, Jarrett, Emanuel & Co.—has been consigned to a lock box. We’re left to imagine Obama on his BlackBerry: “Hey Caroline, if it’s Biden, Bill R or HRC, who u prefer? Really? Thx! C u later.”
When people suggest that Caroline’s intimacy with Obama is a prime reason Gov. Paterson should appoint her, it assumes that intimacy with Obama is actually possible. The cool cat has stayed cool, choosing the catchall she’s a “very dear friend” over touting her professional achievements. And Paterson himself, a new player to the big time, is busy forging his own identity. It can’t sit well with him to suggest that without Caroline he, the governor of New York, won’t be able to get President Obama and his circle on the phone.
The hope for Caroline’s troubled candidacy now is that another dynastic story than her own may provide her next act. When The Washington Post’s Phil Graham was the manic, magnetic media king of the New Frontier capital, his wife Katharine was drab and invisible in the background. When her husband died in a suicide, she stumbled uncertainly at first. She was inarticulate, she lacked charm. No one really imagined that she would run The Washington Post herself. Then she found, just as Caroline has with politics, that printer's ink coursed through her veins. Yes you can, she thought. And yes she did.
I have to admit I’d love to see Princess Caroline get the seat just to watch that transformation. Perhaps that’s what the governor is betting on.
Tina Brown is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast. She is the author of the 2007 New York Times best seller The Diana Chronicles. Brown is the former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Talk magazines and host of CNBC's Topic A with Tina Brown. She has written for numerous publications, including The Times of London, The Spectator, and The Washington Post.
Note: This article originally stated Kennedy endorsed Obama this summer. It has been updated.
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Caroline Kennedy is a person of integrity and honesty. It will be refreshing t have her as our senator. Clinton never had either of these qualities and was a mediocre senator at best.!!!!!
Hillary Clinton was a mediocre senator? English is my third language, and while I had an inkling of what 'mediocre' means, I had to double-check what the word means. The result; Clinton is anything but mediocre. And I am not - in all honesty - a big fan of hers. Now if you excuse me while I go check what "envy" means. Would this word accurate to describe Nancianne, and all those who loathe Hillary? Perhaps, "ignorant" is a more apt term? I will soon find out.
If you look at Clinton's web site you will find that she is a master at putting her name on other people's bills. She had NO major legislative accomplishments in the 8 years she was in the senate. She is good at photo ops and press releases but that is all.
Yet again, another witty article from Ms Tina.
Gov. Paterson is blind, and if he does pick Caroline to replace Sen. Cliton, this will the case of the blind leading the bland. I personally will for the first time actually register to vote, and I would vote against the both of them in 2010.
The issue for me isn't about her qualification or inexperience. The issue for me why her, and not many other local politicians and do gooders, who have been working on behalf of the people of this state over many years. To ignore them is to insult the intelligence of the people of this state.
Caroline's appoinment will be the antithesis of what Obama promised to bring to Washington.
Here's my predicition: Caroline Kennedy will be the first female president. And if all goes accordingly, she'll run for president in 2016.
So what if Caroline is not all bubbly and gushy does that have to be an asset to be a Senator...she is just a quiet, reserved person and as long as she can get things done isn't that all that matters?
I'm sure if she gets the seat she will come out of her shell more, New York needs someone who will work for them and she doesn't have to be "loud, cutesy or smarmy" to do it.
I notice Tina refers to the royal family in some of her comments, well, that's not a bad thing surely as the Royal Family are loved in the US.
Not all politicians have to be like Sarah Palin with her over the top "good ole gal" persona, which I found a bit embarrassing to say the least.
Let's see, the Republican Party represents Wall Street (even though Lehman Bros. hotshots gave 60% of their political donations to the Democrats) and the donkey party is aligning itself with hereditary privilege. This might explain why the middle class in this country is disappearing? Tut-tut Ms. Brown. You make a good case against giving a languid member of a cosseted slice of New York society high political office because it might, Mmm, might be fun and Uncle Teddy says he'd like to see it happen before he shuffles off this mortal coil. But then you back off offering us the promise that it might be jolly good fun to watch, y'know.
I have to agree that it is hard for me to see this soft spoken, monotoned, limited vocabulary Kennedy in any office. Heard her on TV and was astounded at the lack of vibrancy that I would expect from NY.
Chicago Girl
Obama as the next JFK? Banish the thought - we don't want him shot as well.
I read with interest your column on Caroline Kennedy today.
My father died when I was 2 years old in front of me under bloody
circumstances, and it was very painful for me to watch Caroline Kennedy
during the election glom on to Obama. I have felt with certainty all
along that Caroline's real "fairy dust" with Obama was as you said an
attempt to find a connection with a father she never really knew. I am
told by psychologist friends that women in their fifties go through a
profound change, and it's not just the kids growing up and leaving
home. It's also resolving once and for all things deeply rooted in the
past that were traumas repressed and the like.
So for Caroline, Obama is that surrogate father, and from my own
experience, it is that particular connection that is making her feel so
alive and whole. The entry into politics may be just a way for her to
stay close to something she has so recently found after so many years
which is finally a connection with the live memory of her dad.
At any rate, as a jounalist, it's probably terrific to have a ringside
seat to this psychodrama....
Dear Tina:
I enjoyed this piece very much.
However, I must take issue with your likening Sarah Palin to "pure animal protein."
She is only that if the animal has mad cow disease, with the eating away of the physical brain that entails.
Ms. Kennedy didn't react to photos on the wall of her dead family and she is 'reserved'? Give me a break! She is reticent? Private? Fearful? Give me another break! The woman has had two family members assinated, buried her only sibling and her mother, gone through the assination of her father and her uncle, buried relatives in tragedies and in the normal course of events, and had her life, every second of it, on public display. Reticence is a small consequence of that. Elitist? Without a doubt. people with that kind of generational money, clout, and cachet aren't like those of uswho live paycheck to paycheck, at least in terms of their real-world life experience. How does that disqualify her from serving in the Senate?
Really, now. Which senator currently serving has been to the grocery store on a weekly basis in the last ten years? Which senator currently serving has had his/her kids in public schools in the last ten years? Which senator currently serving has had to worry about health care or paying the electric bill in the last ten years?
As for Ms. Kennedy's connection with Obama, i don't see that either of them required that connection. Mr. Obama would have won the election without it and Ms. Kennedy would have remained a Kennedy without it. So maybe, just maybe, there is something there in Caroline Kennedy, something unexpected but valuable. As a senator, she would not be beholding to any special interests for her seat, she woiuld not be nearly as likely to be tempted into stupidity by the trappings and perks of power, and she couldn't be any worse than any other junior senator with no Capitol Hill experieince. She might be better, since she will be able to make connections on the strength of her name alone, instead of having to pay for them in some tit-for-tat way like everybody else.
Are there better candidates? Probably. Are there worse candidates for the NY senate seat? Absolutely.
I too hope that Princess Caroline will get the job, so I can make fun of her for the next 2 years.
Wonder if Caroline knows that she might have to, you know, do some actual work.....
Off, off thread: Ms Huffington has real competition now. Mr Brown & you & Ms Huffington make the web sizzle.
I share your good wishes for Ms Kennedy. Ms Kennedy has a lot to learn & a lot of work. I wonder if she is up to it. I'll call it remarkable if she does it. I will be duly impressed.
The USA is in the need of a great deal of luck & intelligent, forceful leaders.
No drama but immagination with constant, continuing follow up's may be the ticket. A closet play or so, maybe?
nice piece, Tina. really. it's witty and transparent. good stuff.
oh, and it's HOPEFUL. ta
See now? This is what is wrong with current "journalism."
1. Ms. Brown insists that "the Kennedy's" were never happy with Hillary Clinton in a Senate seat once held by RFK. This is, of course, contrary to the entire public record. The idea that anybody in the Kennedy family even regarded the seat, which had been held by a three other Senators for over 30 years, in a proprietary manner is asinine. The fact that Senator Ted Kennedy and RFK, Jr. (himself nearly a candidate) both endorsed and campaigned for Hillary - and that Caroline and a number of her relatives who live in NYS supported her is also glossed over. Nowhere in the public record will you find any criticism, or even hearsay of criticism, by "the Kennedy's" of Ms. Clinton's Senate ambitions or career.
2. Ms. Brown basis her superior knowledge of the unspoken deep thoughts of members of the Kennedy family on the hackneyed and misleading analogy to the UK's monarchy. This allows her to speak of "The Kennedy's" as if they were a cohesive collective - a firm or an institution like the British royal family. Of course they are not, and Ms. Brown neglects to mention that several of Caroline Kennedy's cousins supported Ms. Clinton against Obama in the primaries. RFK, Jr. even went so far as to make TV ads for her.
3. Ms. Brown's mind-reading also seems to have resulted in a scoop! All the contemporaneous press accounts and statements, both on the record by those involved and anonymously by those who witnessed, have said that it was Caroline Kennedy who lobbied and convinced her uncle (and a number of cousins, including Maria Shriver) to come off the "silence=Clinton" fence and endorse Obama.But Tina Brown's psychic powers now reveal that it was the other way around!
What rubbish. Ms. Kennedy is a woman who, having long been preoccupied with child-rearing (often an obsession with those who lost parents and surrogate parents when young) has decided to be more aggressively involved in the community. This is a common story.
By virtue of her wealth, connections, and - yes - name, she is able to engage at a higher level than middle-class housewives in similar situations (Who do things like take charge of a local charity and run for town board every day in America.) are able to. She can grab for the job and power she wants and is doing so. Frankly, that sounds just like her father and uncles. And just like Hillary too.
Ms. Brown is, by her own words, a close friend of Ms. Clinton and a strong supporter of her Presidential bid. Maybe when she gets done being bitter about Ms. Kennedy's role in thwarting that bid she'll start acting like a real journalist.
I appreciate finderj's comment...and am so tired of people showing how smart they are by being catty (yes, men do it too!) If we want change, Obama, Caroline, whoever, will not be sufficient unless we do some work on ourselves too.
Don't you mean: "Caroline: The Reasons Why Not?" I don't want to go on but every British Editor-in-Chief has this passionate love affair with Camelot and the Kennedys. Give me a break! Take off the rose colored glasses Caroline is as effective a choice for the senate as Sarah Palin was for the White House which is the reason why she needs to be appointed she couldn't win in a general election.
You hit the nail on the head, Tina. Although I'm not sure I want to see Caroline in the Senate just to see what happens...
Hmmm... No mention of Caroline as the little girl whose father was publicly murdered, whose uncle was publicly murdered, and how THAT might have affected her life of "hiding." Maybe Caroline Kennedy wanted to keep her children safe.
Tina Brown and others as blind as her think Ms Kennedy is afraid to take insults from small people like Brown, and that's why she's been "hiding" all these years. Maybe she's just afraid to take a bullet, Tina Brown, has that ever occurred to you?
What an awful article. Tina Brown, swirling through social scenes she so snidely derides here, assumes Ms. Caroline Kennedy is as vapid as Brown and should be out doing the same thing. What a monumental ego. Who is Tina Brown to assume she knows how Caroline Kennedy thinks? This article tells us way, way more about Tina Brown than it does about Caroline Kennedy. If only we were so lucky that Tina Brown and people like her would go into "hiding."
Nice piece, but.."Who's Zoomin' Who?"
Really?
You know the sound a basketball makes when it clanks off the rim?
Jesus, what's the benefit of being so snarky about Caroline?
". . emerged from her Upper East Side walk-in closet after 51 years."
First off, although her qualifications for senator are admittedly nebulous, she has not been a parasite, hanging around eating bon bons. Her accomplishments may not be ideally suited for a senator seat, but they are well documented. She has, at the very least, a solid understanding of constitutional law and a prodigious fund-raising ability, inherited or not.
This woman-on-woman trashing, with its undercurrents of envy, is always regrettable to read, no matter what its surface attractions.
P.S. I somehow doubt that Tina Brown suffers for lack of closet space herself.
I have read, and re-read Ms. Brown's column now three times. Forgive me, I simply can't understand what the heck she is saying. Unless I knew of Ms. Brown's integrity and history I'd say this was more like a posion-pen letter from some crackpot right wing Elmer Gantry (a la Ann Coulter) than a respected, accomplished journalist. Help me.
CK is freakin' airhead. She'll fit in perfectly with the rest of the Dems.
Thank you.
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