CHANGE?

Posted at  9:03 a.m. ET

With Hillary Clinton headed to the State Department, a Senate seat from New York opens.  Governor David Paterson will make the appointment.

This is an opportunity for change we can believe in - for an appointment based on merit.  Well, some chance.  We're already getting the first rumblings of standard Democratic politics:

WASHINGTON — Caroline Kennedy is interested in the Senate seat that would open once Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes secretary of state, according to a close relative who says the powerful Kennedy clan is fully behind her rising to the office previously held by her uncle.

"I know she's interested," Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Friday. "She spent a lot of her life balancing public service with obligations to her family. Now her children are grown, and she is ready to move onto a bigger stage."

I'm impressed.  That same description applies to several thousand other New Yorkers whose names don't happen to be Kennedy.

The Kennedy family's connections and history cannot force Paterson to choose Caroline, but the family's strong support could make it difficult for him not to.

Robert Kennedy said the family would come out en masse for her if she does get the appointment and has to run for election in 2010.

"If she runs, you will see more Kennedys than you have ever seen in your life," he said.

Look, I have nothing against her.  From all accounts, she's a fine individual, and the most mature and dignified of the Kennedys.  But the Kennedy family gave Barack Obama a big boost toward the presidency, as the story notes:

She made a splash in early 2008 by writing an op-ed column for The New York Times declaring her support for Obama, saying he had the potential to be as inspirational to Americans as her father was in the 1960s. She also spoke at the Democratic National Convention.

She then hit the campaign trail with Obama, and worked on the vice-presidential search that eventually settled on Joe Biden.

Appointing Caroline, ahead of many more worthy candidates in New York, would look like a blatant political payoff, which it would be. 

Further, New York is a big state.  I don't normally play the group-politics game, but it's been years since residents outside the downstate, New York City orbit have been represented in the U.S. Senate.  Maybe it's time for that kind of change we can believe in.

Finally, if her name were not Kennedy, would she even be considered?  Much of her public service, and it is admirable indeed, is no different from the service performed by legions of women in the state...and they aren't being considered for the nation's highest legislative body.

New York has a tradition of sending high-powered, sometimes larger-than-life figures to the Senate, symbolized by the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan.  With all due respect to Ms. Kennedy, she's not in that league.

December 6, 2008.