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Dignified Caroline Kennedy Deserves A Chance

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 31, 2008

Here are excerpts from editorials in newspapers around the world:

The Observer, London, on Caroline Kennedy as New York's new senator:

There will rightly be differing views of whether Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg deserves to be appointed as Hillary Rodham Clinton's successor as the U.S. senator from New York.

She has, after all, held no significant public office in her life and has only recently begun to appear on political platforms.

What Ms. Kennedy unquestionably possesses is a name.

And while the dynasticism of American politics is often unattractive (as it can be elsewhere) there is no argument over the way Ms. Kennedy has coped with being the person she is.

As the only daughter of the most tragic U.S. president of the postwar era and of unquestionably the most ballyhooed first lady of all time, Caroline Kennedy has had to live a life freighted with a celebrity and emotional charge unparalleled in modern America and perhaps anywhere else.

Her father the president and her uncle the senator, both impossibly idealised in their time, were each murdered. Her mother, the most iconic woman in the world, died early from cancer. Her two brothers are dead too, one at birth and the other in a plane crash.

Yet for 40 years and more, Ms. Kennedy has guarded her privacy, brought up a family and made occasional forays into the public arena, without once trading on or disgracing the place she has been fated to occupy in American life.

Not all Kennedys can say as much. Ms. Kennedy may or may not merit the job for which she is applying. But she will face elections in 2010 and 2012 if she is appointed, so we may soon find out if the magic lives on.

Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo, on the U.S. auto industry bailout:

The U.S. Senate has rejected an auto industry rescue bill that would have provided up to $14 billion...in emergency loans to the country's embattled Big Three carmakers. ...

As what happened recently made clear, the consequences of simply allowing (General Motors Corp.) to go bust would be too dire.

Already, two shocking events that took place in the United States this autumn worsened the crisis: the collapse of major investment bank Lehman Brothers and the House's initial rejection of the bill to save troubled financial institutions.

GM's failure would come as the third and biggest jolt for the world economy. The fate of GM will go a long way toward determining the depth and length of the global recession. ...

After Republican senators refused to support a compromise proposal to rescue the automakers, Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, said the administration will consider other options to prevent a collapse of the troubled automakers, including dipping into the $700-billion bailout program for financial institutions.

The spokeswoman pointed out that the failures of the companies would deal a serious blow to the economy.

Indeed, the U.S. government and the Congress have the obligation to make every possible effort to minimize the damage to the world economy from the predicament of the U.S. auto industry.

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