Lately pols and pundits have pontificated that Caroline Kennedy lack the experience to be a U.S. Senator. Here is an in your face retort from Long Island's Newsday that indicates there was a whole lot of unused political tread on four out of five recent NY Senators.
In debating the qualifications of Caroline Kennedy, it is worth noting only one of the last five occupants of the Senate seat to which she aspires held previous elected office: Republican Charles Goodell, who was a Congressman when Gov. Nelson Rockefeller chose him to complete the unfinished term of Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968. Kennedy had been attorney general in his brother President John F. Kennedy’s administration before his election as Senator in 1964. James Buckley, brother of conservative icon William F. Buckley, Jr., was elected in 1970, having been a lawyer who worked in the family oil and gas business and run for Senate two years earlier. Democrat Daniel P. Moynihan was a university professor, U.N. ambassador, and presidential policy adviser before unseating Buckley in 1976. After retiring in 2000, Moynihan was succeeded by Hillary Rodham Clinton, the previous First Lady, who’d never run for office on her own.
