Caroline Kennedy is hoping to replace Hilary Clinton as a senator because Clinton has moved on as part of the post Bush reshuffle sums up the three dynasties of US politics. The Kennedy's, the Clinton's and the Bushes. While I don't like inherited power I am still a bit of a sucker for the Kennedy story. The article below from the Guardian online is interesting.
Caroline Kennedy at the presentation of a children's book about her father, John F Kennedy. Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters
As political debuts go, it was not an entirely brilliant start: Caroline Kennedy, America's most famous political daughter, ducking the television cameras to dive into a waiting black four-wheel drive, only moments after announcing she wanted a seat in the Senate.
The awkward scene offered a new take on Kennedy. Was this the fairytale ending at last for the erstwhile princess of Camelot, the survivor of a family that suffered more than its share of assassination, cancer, and tragic accidents? Or was this an example of Park Avenue privilege claiming what it saw as its due?
Or, in yet another twist, was Kennedy following in the footsteps of Hillary Clinton, the woman she is seeking to replace in the Senate, trading on name recognition and family connections to make her entry into elected politics?
The truth is, for a woman who has been a celebrity from her birth 51 years ago, the public knows relatively little about Kennedy's personality or her politics — beyond the broad assumption that she is by birthright a Democrat.
That is by design: people who know or have worked with Kennedy in New York describe a woman who is almost self-effacing in public, rarely initiates conversations at charity events, and has never sought publicity for her efforts on causes such as helping to raise $350m (£230m) for the city's public schools.
She has a horror of interviews. Her late mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, once wrote about her daughter that she reflexively threw her hands in front of her face whenever she saw a camera.
So it is perhaps a measure of Kennedy's seriousness that within a few hours of that inglorious flight from reporters, she was standing her ground and making her case to replace Clinton when she leaves the Senate to take up her post as secretary of state.
"I've spent a lifetime growing up around public policy issues, and public service is something I'm proud of in the family tradition," Kennedy told reporters in Buffalo yesterday. "It's something that I've always wanted to do."
She showed little shyness in setting out her qualifications. "I've worked in New York City public schools. I've written books on the constitution, I've raised my family, and now it's time, I think, with the problems we have, for me to be able to step forward and do more," Kennedy said.
The twin encounters were themselves evidence of Kennedy's grasp of the mechanics of winning elections in New York. Though the state's governor, David Paterson, has sole authority to choose Clinton's replacement, the successful candidate will have to run in a special election in 2010.
But Hank Sheinkopf, the veteran New York political consultant, was unimpressed. "It's not a great start," he said. "In order to be a great candidate you have to accept one simple fact: that you can lose, and you can be beaten in a general election. She hasn't got that. She has never even been in combat. She has got a ways to go."
Kennedy's trip to Buffalo shows she understands that campaigning starts immediately. As soon as she signalled she wanted the Senate seat, Kennedy engaged a well-regarded political strategist, Josh Isay — who is also working for the Israeli Likud leader, Binyamin Netanyahu.
She began courting women's organisations: one of her first calls on Monday was to an abortion rights group, indicating she will be strongly pro-choice.
Kennedy also borrowed a page out of Clinton's successful manual for political neophytes seeking state-wide office in New York by making yesterday's pilgrimage to the un-glamorous areas upstate that account for 40% of the vote.
Faye Wattleton, a long-time women's activist and president of the Centre of Advancement for Women, said Kennedy had never demonstrated the same commitment to women's issues as Clinton. She also doubted Kennedy's ability to operate outside of elite circles in Manhattan. "She is a New York City creature. There is no evidence, or little evidence, that she has any support upstate."
But in most other ways, Kennedy is the anti-Clinton, says a former New York City official who has worked with Kennedy. Clinton, who was also accused during her first run for the Senate in 2000 of trading on her husband's credentials, spent her adult life immersed in policy details. But as her disastrous experience in steering health care reform in the 1990s showed, Clinton was not naturally adept at building political friendships or networking.
Kennedy, it is believed, understands that process almost instinctively — but lacks Clinton's depth of understanding on the issues.
"She is really spectacular at politics, but she really doesn't know about policy," said the former official. "But she can network and she can fundraise. Everyone who works with her says she is really smart and that is half the battle."
Others who have worked with Kennedy in fundraising for New York schools say she is a hard worker, although she did not oversee the efforts on a daily basis.
Kennedy was just five when her father was assassinated, and has lived most of her life since then on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She attended Harvard University and Columbia law school, and married the artist and designer Edwin Schlossberg, whose firm has designed exhibits for the Brooklyn Museum and the college basketball hall of fame — although she never officially changed her name.
The couple have three children: two daughters and a son. Her daughters are now away at college, freeing up Kennedy for public life.
After the death of her mother in 1994 and the plane crash that killed her younger brother, John, in 1999, Kennedy became the last surviving member of her branch of the clan.
She did not practice law full-time but wrote and edited seven books — including one on the right to privacy.
She also became a regular fixture at the American Ballet Theatre, as its honorary chairwoman, and at charity events in New York.
But throughout, Kennedy was conscious of her responsibility as her father's sole surviving heir, and the keeper of his legacy. She took an active role in the John F Kennedy Library Foundation, and in selecting those honoured by his Profiles in Courage award.
She remained close to her uncle, the senator Ted Kennedy, who assumed the role of walking Kennedy brides down the aisle after his brothers were shot.
And she never — despite her privacy — entirely ruled out a run for public office in her own right. "I don't have any plans to do that right now," she said in a 2002 interview. "My kids are young."
But until this year, Kennedy rarely participated in politics unless it involved her family or other close connections. She joined the rest of the Kennedy clan on stage at the 2000 Democratic convention. She campaigned with John Kerry's daughters in the 2004 elections.
That changed after a meeting with Barack Obama in 2007, when Kennedy sought for the first time to use her influence in a Democratic primary. In an opinion piece in the New York Times early this year, she said Obama reminded her of her father's effect on politics.
Together with her uncle, Kennedy began appearing at campaign events, from small colleges to big arenas in Los Angeles.
"This is a bit unusual for me because I generally don't get involved in politics," Kennedy told one Obama rally in Texas.