Kennedys and Ambassadors
For more than a month the press has been reporting that Caroline Kennedy is going to be appointed by President Obama as Ambassador to Japan. Nothing has happened officially yet, so perhaps a snag has developed, but I must say that I scratched my head when I heard the news and haven't been able to get it out of my mind ever since. It's not that I have anything against Caroline Kennedy at all, on the contrary. I once met her at a Kennedy Library event and she was as gracious and charming as she could be. She has had an emotionally difficult life, however privileged it might have been in some respects, and she played an important role in 2008 in getting Barack Obama the Democratic nomination. But if she is indeed appointed, it will be yet another piece of evidence of the enormous changes in the business of governing in the fifty years since her father was President. John F. Kennedy ran for President in 1960 arguing that the United States was in a worldwide Col...