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Kennedy vs. Palin

The New York Times has now weighed in on Caroline Kennedy’s fitness to serve as senator from New York. According to a lede from a recent story, even the true blue New York Times is having a problem wrapping its headlines around the idea:

“She has not held a full-time job in years, has not run for even the lowliest office, and has promoted such noncontroversial causes as patriotism, poetry and public service. Yet Caroline Kennedy’s decision to ask Gov. David A. Paterson to appoint her to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Senate seat suggests that she believes she is as well prepared as anyone to serve as the next senator from New York — and is ready to throw her famously publicity-averse self into the challenge of winning back-to-back elections in 2010 and 2012.

Already, some columnists, bloggers and even potential colleagues in Congress have begun asking if she would be taken seriously if not for her surname. Representative Gary Ackerman, a Queens Democrat, told a radio host on Wednesday that he did not know what Ms. Kennedy’s qualifications were, “except that she has name recognition — but so does J. Lo.”

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