The Political Inquirer

I am more than a little irritated with this Caroline Kennedy controversy. What is the issue? Qualifications some say. Nonsense. Caroline Kennedy attended and graduated from Radcliffe College. She also went on to receive a law degree from Columbia Law School. And that would be enough to qualify a person for the United States Senate.

But it doesn’t stop there, according to her wikipedia page.

She is involved in the New York Public School System. She is the president of the Kennedy Library Foundation and an adviser to the Harvard Institute of Politics which is a living memorial to her father.

She is a member of the New York and Washington, D.C. bar associations. She is also a member of the boards of directors of the Commission on Presidential Debates and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and is an honorary chair of the American Ballet Theatre.

And if that isn’t enough, there is more. And this is more personal for me as a bookseller. She is an accomplished and bestselling author. And in the world of publishing, that is a rare person. And you cannot argue it is because of her celebrity that sells these books. The public are not fools. To be a bestseller, there must be quality there and Caroline Kennedy reeks of quality. Let us go down her list of books. These books represent her accomplishments and a sign of what will come as a United States Senator.

Caroline Kennedy’s first book came out in 1992, sixteen years ago. She co-wrote it with Ellen Alderman, a classmate of Caroline’s at Columbia Law School. The title is In Our Defense. This book examines the first ten amendments, point-by-point, of the United States Constitution. It is more of a scholarly book, but was a bestseller and deservedly so.

Her next book was also co-written with Ellen Alderman came out in 1997 and is called The Right to Privacy, which is a blistering defense of our right to be left alone.

These two books alone would be enough to qualify Caroline Kennedy for the United States Senate, but there was more.

Her next book emulated the great work produced by her father, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. He wrote Profiles in Courage and won the Pulitzer Prize for this great work. She edited a sequel to his masterpiece, Profiles in Courage in Our Time.

Caroline’s book (she is the editor) honors modern-day heroes penned by stellar authors. Some of these courageous politicians include Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold, for their fight for Campaign Finance Reform. Also included is Bob Woodward penning a piece on President Gerald R. Ford’s pardon of President Nixon. The pardon cost Gerald Ford the 1976 election in which Jimmy Carter defeated him. What Ford did, in retrospect, was the right thing, but it took the courage to risk it all. What he risked was an elected term as President of the United States. What he gained was the respect and love of a grateful nation, but not for many years after the act. He lost the election in large measure due to the pardon he granted Nixon. Ford responded in the right way in his effort to heal a nation and to put the national nightmare of Watergate behind us, even though he risked great political loss. Ford was keenly aware of the risk and acted according to his conviction: healing the nation was more important than his own political future. He placed the nation needs above his own and that captures the essence of the courage that Kennedy wrote about so eloquently.

Caroline Kennedy, through the Kennedy Library, also awards the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award and in 2002 gave the award to Dean Koldenhoven, the one-term Mayor of Palos Heights, Illinois, for speaking out against bigotry and religious intolerance toward an Islamic community that had hoped to convert a local church into a mosque.

She also put together a number of other books that belong on everybody’s bookshelf. They are A Patriot’s Handbook: Songs, Poems and Speeches Celbrating the Land We Love, A Family Christmas, A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Children, and a book of her mother’s favorite poems, The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Caroline Kennedy is an accomplished person who could have done nothing with her life but chose this. And with all these accomplishments, I’ll bet she will say her greatest accomplishment: her children. When she was asked why she supported Barack Obama for President, she cited her children as the reason for her enthusiastic support. She obviously did a great job raising them, just like her mother.

I say get behind Caroline Kennedy for United States Senate and when she runs for election, let’s all support this great person with money and ground support. She will do this nation proud. Reading on Walden Bookstore.