I’m not a fan of the concept of U.S. Senate seats being treated as family heirlooms, and thus the idea of New York Senator Caroline Kennedy leaves me cold. Interestingly, several liberal bloggers don’t like it either.

On the other hand, some would argue that we witnessed this year the triumph of a political celebrity in a celebrity-saturated culture. That argument would be supremely compelling if the three Senate seats opened up by the Obama administration in Illinois, Delaware and New York ended up going to Jesse Jackson Jr., Beau Biden (eventually) and Caroline Kennedy.