Polls + Celebrity Culture = Crappy Democracy

I admit to having a soft spot for the Kennedy family, its members' many flaws notwithstanding. (Maybe it's the Irishman in me, or the part of me that still applies a possibly unmerited Golden Era sheen to the 1960s). Partially for this reason, I'm hard-pressed to argue against the appointment of Caroline Kennedy to Hillary Clinton's soon-to-be-vacated Senate seat. She seems like a fine woman, and I'm sure she'd be a fine senator. Yet I'm the same guy who argued against Clinton's presidential candidacy in no small part because I didn't think it was healthy for a Clinton to follow a Bush who followed another Clinton who followed another Bush. So I suppose, in the interest of consistency, I must argue against Kennedy's nomination and, for that matter, Andrew Cuomo's.

We live in a culture that is obsessed with and driven by celebrities, and we have a political culture that is at least in some part driven by polls. (If you're thinking that I'm parroting what was at one time a talking point of the McCain campaign, I guess you're right. I think Barack Obama is much more than a celebrity, but in the end there's no getting around the fact that he is one.) As a consequence, we end up with a political process that is increasingly dominated by people who have become celebrated, sometimes for fairly dubious reasons, and by an undue emphasis on polling, which purports to provide a sense of what "the people" are thinking. So what happens? The range of individuals elected to high office becomes limited, and the range of options they consider while in office is similarly limited by what the polls determine to be feasible political pathways.

Two recent polls suggest that New Yorkers favor Kennedy to replace Clinton in the Senate, with Cuomo not far behind. I'm hoping that New York Gov. David Paterson goes in a different direction. Of course, if he avoids trying to sell the seat to the highest bidder, he'll be setting a better example than some.