Presumptuous? Caroline Is Aiming Low

When John F Kennedy Jr founded George magazine, many upbraided him for not trading more valuably on his clan’s mystique. But when sister Caroline aims for a Senate seat, Maureen Dowd writes in the New York Times, she’s “blasted by a howl of ‘How dare she?’” The Senate is already a den of patronage, Dowd notes—and the Kennedy scion is a better choice than most.

“People are suddenly awfully choosy about who gets to go to the former home of Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond,” writes Dowd; in a post-Bush Washington, political dynasties aren’t so appealing. But Congress is in dire need of fresh faces after years of irrelevance. “It isn’t what your name is,” Dowd concludes. “It’s what you do with it. Or, in the case of W., don’t.” (More Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg stories.)