Quote of the Day (Maureen Dowd, on New York Senator-Designate Kirsten Gillibrand)

“The 42-year-old Gillibrand, who has been in the House for only two years, is known as opportunistic and sharp- elbowed. Tracy Flick is her nickname among colleagues in the New York delegation, many of whom were M.I.A. at her Albany announcement.

Fellow Democrats were warning Harry Reid on Friday that he was going to have his hands full with the new senator because she’s ‘a pain.’”—Maureen Dowd, ““Which Governor is Wackier?” The New York Times, January 24, 2009

(I have my issues with a larger trend that Caroline Kennedy came to epitomize: the “branding” of American political dynasties—not just the Kennedys, but also the Clintons, the Bushes, the Gores—who capitalize on family connections and fame to elbow aside others in a democracy.

Nevertheless, for all her inarticulateness—a weakness that, the overwhelming majority of the press failed to note, sometimes afflicted her uncles Bobby and Ted—Kennedy struck me as basically a class act. She certainly did not deserve the leaking and trashing to which she was subject by the minions of Gov. David Paterson.

What a way for Gillibrand to make her entrance onto the big political stage: to be likened to the budding high-school politician played by Reese Witherspoon in the great comedy Election. One term in Congress, peddling positions that would make the NRA smile, and now she’s ready to assume the seat once occupied by Bobby Kennedy, one of the past century’s most prominent victims of assassination. What was Gov. Paterson thinking?

I have to wonder if this fiasco would have occurred if Paterson still had by his side Charles O’Byrne, the ex-priest-turned-political insider. O’Byrne had become close to Caroline Kennedy while he was in Columbia Law School with one of her cousins. A decade later, while still a Jesuit, he officiated at the wedding of John F. Kennedy Jr. as well as at his memorial service.

Disclosure of his failure to taxes for four several years earlier in this decade, during a period of clinical depression around the time he left the priesthood, forced O’Byrne to resign as Paterson’s chief aide. At one stroke, his departure seems to have left Paterson—a genial man with generally good policy instincts—without a shrewd political enforcer.

At very least, O’Byrne would not have resorted to trashing his old friend after her withdrawal—he would have found a face-saving way for her to pull out. He might even have been able to intervene earlier in the process, persuading Kennedy not to jump into the fray lest she she become covered with muck.

Instead, Paterson has now managed to tick off the Clintons, the Cuomos, AND the Kennedys over this affair. It’s hard to see how a one-term upstate Congresswoman who sounds even less appealing than Sarah Palin can help him.)