The Curious Campaign Of Caroline Kennedy

Over the past couple of weeks, Caroline Kennedy's quest to be the new Hillary Clinton has brought a change in the theme music deployed by the media from "Sweet Caroline" to "Caroline, No," the Beach Boys' ode to a lost love that asks, "Where is the girl I used to know?"

From an aesthetic standpoint, this is a good thing: happy or sad, it's always better to have Brian Wilson's music rattling around your consciousness than Neil Diamond's. But it also reflects miscalculations by Ms. Kennedy and her advisers about the extent to which her persona and that of her father could exempt her from the rules the news media and politicians play by in these types of situations.

It is not that anyone regards the pursuit of public office as a meritocracy — this is, after all, politics we're talking about. And as has been noted more than once, Ms. Kennedy is seeking a Senate seat for which Ms. Clinton was given the Democratic nomination based on the persona she created as the wife of a President; her most-compelling rival for the job is someone who first came to prominence because his father was New York's Governor, and the man making the choice had his start aided by being the son of one of the city's most-respected politicians.

GIVE 'EM SOMETHING ELSE TO FIGHT ABOUT: The efforts by officials with close ties to Mayor Bloomberg (left) to promote Caroline Kennedy for U.S. Senate have spurred Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver to throw another log on the bonfire of his feud with the Mayor while warning Governor Paterson that if selected she might have divided loyalties.

Paterson Perhaps Too Forthcoming

And if Governor Paterson got to his current position with less than the customary scrutiny, it was due to the crashing indiscretion of Eliot Spitzer, not because he willfully ducked the media. Indeed, in an attempt to immediately bring to light the embarrassments of his own past strayings by talking about them to reporters, Mr. Paterson drew a certain backlash for offering more information than some thought was required.

When Ms. Clinton first sought the Senate nomination a year before the 2000 election, the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Doug Marlette mocked her by likening her presumption to Monica Lewinsky's telling one of President Clinton's key advisers that she'd like a good job, and one where she didn't have to work hard.

While that captured the distinct sense of entitlement Hillary Clinton displayed in big-footing the early favorite for the nomination, Westchester Congresswoman Nita Lowey, she overcame that initial perception by not merely touring the state but mastering the issues for each of its 62 counties. Whatever negative preconceptions people had about her — which included indignation that she was apparently settling into New York just to run for office — were ultimately overcome by the fact that she outworked her Republican opponent, Rick Lazio, during their campaign.

Because the selection of a new Senator for the next two years — and a big leg up in the special election that will be held in 2010 to fill out Ms. Clinton's term, which runs two years beyond that — is being made by a one-man electorate, the most-serious vetting is being done by the news media rather than the voters. And Ms. Kennedy has not done herself any favors by acting as if the process is beneath her.

She first ducked answering reporters' questions directly, instead responding in writing to queries submitted in advance. It's a tactic some mega-stars successfully use with celebrity magazines in an effort to keep their images as well-toned as their bodies. It doesn't go down as easy with political journalists, however, even those who work for tabloids with the kind of gossip-brained sensibility that led one to headline her late brother's failure of his bar exam, "The Hunk Flunks."

Pols Being Impolitic

It would also figure to stir resentment among politicians who see Ms. Kennedy trying to jump the line, and doing so while avoiding jumping through the hoops that others are forced to endure as part of the process. That could account for the unusually outspoken criticism of her candidacy by someone not involved in the competition — Queens/Nassau U.S. Rep. Gary Ackerman. More conspiracy-minded souls might wonder whether Mr. Ackerman's stance, and even that of a likely Republican candidate for the job in two years, Nassau Congressman Peter King, are being spurred at this time by their friendships with the woman vacating the seat — who is unlikely to have forgiven the denunciations that accompanied Ted and Caroline Kennedy's endorsement of Barack Obama over her for President — cynical as that may sound.

Ms. Kennedy would know as well as anyone how bruising politics can get, and that may be one reason she has continued to keep her head low even at a time when it seems obligatory that she raise her profile to make her case for the job.

But the net effect, political consultant George Arzt said last week, has been "a stealth candidacy. If she's a candidate, people want to see how she responds to questions and handles the press. The impression this gives is that she's trying to escape scrutiny."

Nor did she do herself any favors by initially refusing to pledge that she would back the Democratic nominee for Mayor next year, only to reverse gears when that position stirred some negative reaction. That triggered stories noting that other than Ms. Clinton, Ms. Kennedy has rarely contributed to Democratic candidates for city or state office, on top of earlier revelations that she hadn't voted very often in those contests, either.

Her work as a fund-raiser for the school system during Mayor Bloomberg's first term and his effusive praise for her since her candidacy surfaced fueled speculation that she initially refrained from pledging to endorse the Democratic nominee out of loyalty to him.

Shelly's Shot At Mayor's Man

Ms. Kennedy is being advised by a political consulting firm that also does work for the Mayor, and her most-public champion has been Kevin Sheekey, whom Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver, in his droll style, described during a Dec. 23 radio interview as the "Deputy Mayor for Political Aspirations."

Mr. Arzt said the machinations here have been "very reminiscent of the successful Bloomberg run for Mayor the first time. In that one, though, he got away with it because the focus was very much on the Democratic primary. In this case, she's pretty much the story."

During that 2001 contest, Mr. Bloomberg balked at releasing his tax returns and, when reminded that those seeking the Democratic nomination had done so, retorted in exasperation that "those guys don't make any money!" Since the men he was talking about were all being paid well in excess of $100,000 a year, it didn't exactly help Mr. Bloomberg connect with the great majority of New Yorkers who thought such salaries were nothing to sneer about.

But if he registered as a somewhat out-of-touch rich guy, it didn't dominate coverage of the campaign, since the assumption was that whoever won the Democratic nomination would easily beat him in the general election in November. And when Mr. Bloomberg's saturation-bombing TV ads in the final two weeks of the contest sharply closed the gap, the horse race aspects of the campaign and the less-appealing tendencies of Democratic nominee Mark Green were the key stories for the media, along with a sudden appreciation, given the city's post-9/11 fiscal problems, for how important Mr. Bloomberg's financial acumen might be.

Silence Spurs Clamor

In this case, as Mr. Arzt noted, Ms. Kennedy's initial unwillingness to go through the media drill raised questions about why she should be elevated above others with more-traditional credentials to become Senator, among them State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi, and veteran U.S. Reps. Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney.

None of them had emerged as clear choices before Ms. Kennedy got involved in part because all are from the city or Long Island, which already are represented by the Governor, both leaders of the Legislature, the Attorney General and State Comptroller, and the state's senior U.S. Senator, Chuck Schumer. The most-obvious choice from upstate is U.S. Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand based on geography and gender, and though she is just completing her first term in Congress, she is regarded as smart enough to grow into a good Senator. But her biggest drawback, from Mr. Paterson's vantage point, is also political: if she were chosen, there's a decent chance that Republicans could win back her congressional seat.

One surprise applicant for the job, United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, actually serves to make Ms. Kennedy look like a safer choice by comparison: if you're going to reach outside the realm of elected officials, the daughter of an iconic President figures to be less of a lightning rod than a Teachers union leader who arouses strong feelings, not all of them nice, in editorial writers.

Not Capitalizing on Good Will

Mr. Arzt argued that Ms. Kennedy and her advisers have failed to capitalize on the esteem in which both her late parents are held by New Yorkers, including more than a few journalists, as well as the general impression that she has lived a commendable life remarkably free of some of the embarrassing incidents for which other members of the current generation of Kennedys are known.

"She could have talked to the press, she could have seemed confident, and the press would have been taken with her," Mr. Arzt said.

Instead, Ms. Kennedy seemed to try to go above the working media, much in the way that Mr. Bloomberg did when he mistook the approval he was given by the publishers of the city's three major dailies for a popular consensus that he should be allowed to seek a third term.

By last week, the New York Times reported that Governor Paterson had grown frustrated that Ms. Kennedy, rather than making a case for her fitness for the job in more-public forums, was trying to create a sense of inevitability about her candidacy that would bulldoze him into picking her.

From Favor Bank to Vendetta?

There undoubtedly is an emotion deeper than that coursing through the Governor that talk has shifted from how it might benefit his own political future if he endeared himself to the Kennedy family by picking her to the sense of outrage the clan would feel if he snubbed her after taking her this far down the path. For one thing, it's not Mr. Paterson who's been steering her toward the altar; for another, she's the one who seems decidedly ambivalent about going through with the necessary ceremony.

And Mr. Silver remarked, "If I were the Governor, I would look and question whether this is the appointment I'd want to make, where her first obligation might be to the Mayor of the City of New York, rather than to the Governor who would be appointing her."

Right about then, Ms. Kennedy might have been humming the lyrics of a song by the Shirelles that became a hit the year her father took office, the one that began, "Mama said there'll be days like this ..."