The XX Factor: What women really think.

Would Ted Kennedy Be Satisfied With This Health Care Plan?

Obama was back in campaign form tonight—fighting back, and dead serious about it. And there were notes of his inaugural address, when he called on Americans by invoking “the character of the country” and our sense of responsibility. And the president soared, in that lovely ode to Teddy Kennedy at the end, which you’re right, Hanna, went straight for liberals’ hearts.

But on the specifics, on the substance, I heard more tacking to the center than love for the left. Obama promised that people who don’t have employer-based coverage, or Medicaid or Medicare, will be able to buy affordable coverage on an exchange. But then he finessed the public option. He nodded to its value, but he also said it was only a means to an end. He will not insist on it. He’ll leave it for another day. Maybe four years from now.

Kennedy, Mary Jo Kopechne, and Us

While the papers are full of words like “dynasty” and “legacy,” Mary Jo Kopechne, according to Google Trends, is uppermost in our thoughts. (Read more in DoubleX)

Kennedy Women, Goodbye

One thing we have lost with the passing of Edward Kennedy is a certain generational model of the proper role for the family women in public life—the mother, wife, mistress, and daughter. It’s not a model I will miss ... (Read more in DoubleX.)

Bo, Not To the Rescue

The Obamas said they wanted a rescue dog. The kind you take home from a shelter so it won't be put to sleep. They ended up with a purebred Portuguese Water Dog courtesy of Sen. Ted Kennedy, which, according to the Washington Post, was not a "good fit" for the family it lived with previously, and has been schooled by Kennedy's dog trainers. The Post continues: 

"As for the rescue pledge, the Obamas came up with a solution intended to lend a serious symbolic note: They're going to make a donation to the D.C. Humane Society."

Two lessons: 1) See how great cap and trade is?  2) Moving to Washington means that powerfully persuasive people take you on little jaunts away from your modest and principled intentions—jaunts that seem harmless, but exert a symbolic power of their own.

Good Choice by Caroline

If This Is Dynasty, I'm Joan Collins

Poor Caroline Kennedy: After eight years that made Bush I look way less embarrassing than he used to, we've had enough of political dynasties, thanks. It's unfair, though, to blame her for representing the old way and old guard when the true knock against her is that she hasn't been old school enough, and failed to fork over the kind of campaign cash to state and local Democrats that anyone plotting a political future knows is part of the cost of doing business.

In the end, New York Gov. David Paterson will fill Hillary Clinton's Senate seat with just one consideration in mind: He'll choose the person who he thinks will best secure his own political future. But if that's not Caroline Kennedy, then all the hand-wringing about her unfair familial advantage will have been wildly off-the-mark. The open criticism of her by any number of New York Democrats has already made clear that party people aren't exactly quaking in fear of offending her family; the oligarchy ain't what it used to be. And that this is the reaction at a time when Ted Kennedy is fighting brain cancer makes me think that maybe the "dynasty" has died out already, without an heir.

How Blago Is Hurting Caroline

All the talk about Blago's fundraising in Illinois makes it harder to hear the talk about Caroline Kennedy's potential fundraising in New York, don't you think?

I mean, rationally, one has nothing to do with the other. On the contrary, the country's most entrepreneurial governor (we hope)—and Kennedy are from such different parts of the jungle that Blagojevich's apparent thuggishness is something of an argument for her candidacy: Her granddaddy was a bootlegger, so his descendants didn't have to be, and she isn't likely to be tempted by the kind of pay-to-play schemes that seem to have so consumed Blago's brain that I'll be amazed if he doesn't wind up pleading insanity.

Still, you hear that story about how Jesse Jackson Jr.'s wife may have been passed over for a big state job because she wouldn't be held up for $25,000 by her extortionist of a governor, and that can't help but effect how you hear Harry Reid's comment about all the lovely pots of money that Caroline K. could raise for herself and other Democrats: Ugh, right? As Emily B. points out, that should not be the yardstick we use to take the measure of a candidate.

Whether we talk about it or not, though, the ability to raise pots of cash is, in fact, a huge part of the job. So much so that my distinct impression back when I used to cover the New York congressional delegation was that they had very little time to learn about public policy—through no fault of their own—because they had to spend so much time dialing for dollars and attending fundraisers. As a result, I don't assume that her potential competitors who've been serving in the House are necessarily so much more steeped in policy than she is. And while I agree with Emily Y. that nepotism is demoralizing for those of us who are have-nots when it comes to family or other connections, our current system virtually guarantees political dynasties and other celebrity candidates, like Reagan and Arnold and Al Franken, maybe even as a protection against Blago-style graft. As long as name ID equals campaign cash and the candidate who raises the most so often wins, how could it be otherwise?

I also take issue with Emily B's feeling that New York Democrats don't have to worry too much about campaign cash anyway, because they'll surely hold on to Hillary's Senate seat in 2012. The likely Republican candidate, Peter King, is so reasonable, likeable, and well-funded that I'm not at all certain of that; he's no Rick Lazio and should not be underestimated.

Mostly, though, I like Caroline for the job for reasons that have nothing to do with money: Because her Uncle Teddy has done such an admirable job on so many issues that are high on my own list—health care, anti-poverty programs, pushing for worker protections—I can't help hoping that his favorite niece has learned from him and could take up where he leaves off. She's a plain old-fashioned great story. And for perhaps silly, sentimental, even tribal reasons, I'd like to see her happy.

Yes, Caroline

Have to say, Emily, that your case against Caroline Kennedy for Hillary's Senate seat is a lot more convincing than Richard Bradley's argument that she'd been too tough on him but might not be tough enough to campaign or legislate. (Huh?) And when she heard that Gary Ackerman had compared her to J.Lo., I hope she laughed her tushy off. (Cee K from the Block for Senate? Isn't that a lot like John McCain comparing Obama to Paris Hilton?) Still, I find the whole idea of her second act in Obama's Democratic Party completely irresistible.

She's already come a long way since she stood by her Uncle Teddy at American University last year and endorsed Obama; in retrospect, that seems to have been a turning point both in the campaign and in her life, just a beat ahead of her uncle's cancer diagnosis and her discovery that she not only wanted to pass the baton, but run with it. I find it moving that it took Obama to call her to public service, and think it would be awfully compelling to watch her function as both keeper of the flame and confidante of the change-agent-in-chief. As someone who never wanted to get in the game before, she could be a bridge between the old guard and the new politics.

It is true that suffering and experience are not the same thing—though they were confused often enough during all those arguments about why Hillary ought to get this or that job simply by virtue of all she'd been through. But for me, the question isn't so much whether Kennedy "deserves" the seat. (If politics were about deserves, Nita Lowey would be in her second term as New York's junior senator, and we wouldn't even be having this conversation.) The more important question is whether she'd be any good at it, and I'd have to vote yes on that—then watch with intense interest to see if she proved me right.

End of Dynasties, Please

The ailing Ted Kennedy has said that he would like the successor to his seat be his wife, Vicki. Isn’t this rather richly ironic since Kennedy has done all he can to stop the Clintons from extending their White House dynasty by opposing Hillary’s election to the presidency? Ted’s Senate seat has been in his family for more than 50 years. (It was previously JFK’s.) I’m from Massachusetts, so I know that voters there are reluctant to accept that they have free will when it comes to the political ambitions of Kennedys, but it’s unseemly and un-American for this clan to think it has a permanent claim on any office. XX’s own Rosa Brooks pointed out that the late Benazir Bhutto, seen in this country as a champion of democracy, named her son as her successor in her will. Brooks wrote, “To Bhutto, political power was something one could inherit, something to be passed along from spouse to spouse and from parent to child. … That's dynastic politics, not democratic politics.” Dynastic politics hasn’t worked out very well for us lately. If a candidate is a member of a political family and is also by all measures worthy of being elected to office, fine. But let’s stop choosing our elected officials because they’re married to, or children of, officeholders.