I support Caroline Kennedy for senator mostly because I think she has what it takes to be a great New York politician: brains, dignity, determination, and ethics.

So I’m curious about what this woman born one year before me would do with the job. I suspect she would fill it with grace and maybe even brilliance.

Yes, I am an admirer. We’re practically relatives. Well, not really.

But in a symbolic way: we grew up together. My sister’s name is Caroline after all. And we both wear our hair straight with a side part.

I vividly remember the images of Caroline and John John in the White House. I feel like I was aware of them as a young kid.

Of course I remember when her father was killed. Who can forget those days when my parents were tuned non-stop to those awful images of Jack and Jackie in the car, the solemn images of the funeral, LBJ being sworn in and little John John’s unbearably poignant wave at the funeral.

It was the first "television event" in my life. And I felt the tragedy in a small way even though I was only five-years-old.

So I am sort of a Caroline groupie. I’ve always admired the fact that she seemed like a serious and wonky member of the family; she doesn’t go in for all the personal dysfunction that some of the Kennedy’s seem to display.

It was cool when she married Edwin Scholossberg, her big, Jewish intellectual, who was geeky with an interest in creating interactive media and art installations. 

Then she wrote two scholarly books with Ellen Alderman called  In Our Defense: The Bill of Rights in Action and The Right of Privacy.

I felt for her as she grieved her brother. They were very close and she looked ruptured for years after.

And more recently she worked to raise money for NYC public schools and was an early and influential supporter of Barack Obama. The following is from an op-ed column she wrote for the New York Times called "A President Like My Father .

I have spent the past five years working in the New York City public
schools and have three teenage children of my own. There is a
generation coming of age that is hopeful, hard-working, innovative and
imaginative. But too many of them are also hopeless, defeated and
disengaged. As parents, we have a responsibility to help our children
to believe in themselves and in their power to shape their future.
Senator Obama is inspiring my children, my parents’ grandchildren, with
that sense of possibility.

I like that she would be the first Kennedy women to actually hold an elected office.

I like that she isn’t a fashion plate like her mom but that she has nice, classic style. And she hires cool architects to design her houses. She’s low  key and private and she lives the kind of life I’d like to live if I was rich and famous.

In other words, she seems to have values, dignity and  honesty (and loads of money). My guess is that like so many she’s inspired by Obama and wants to be part of public life—and that’s why she wants to be the first female Kennedy to join the family business. She writes:

I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me
that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have
found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a
new generation of Americans.

In my gut I trust Caroline Kennedy and feel strongly that her intelligence, her powers of reason and her restraint would make her a great senator for New York City.

And it’s not just because we grew up together.