My personal opinion, which is worth nothing,…
Is that Teddy was pushing her…for his own ego….for the Kennedy name…..and Teddy thought he could use his illness to make things happen….
….and Caroline just went along….I think she was pushed into this…”For the Family”
Sad….so very sad…..
You’ve echoed my thoughts .. the idea of wanting to be in the Senate sounds nothing like the Caroline Kennedy we’ve read/heard about all these years.
Her mother went out of her way to be sure her kids weren’t “Kennedys” in the sense of following that family’s tradition of serving in politics, and various and sundry bawdy behaviors. Not that Jackie O was a saint, but at some level it seems she did look at the inlaws as trash. Monied trash. That was confirmed when JFK, Jr. made the comment about his cousins’ bad behavior.
It would have been smarter for Caroline to stay away from the Senate fray. If she wanted to serve in an Obama administration, she could have been Ambassador to the Vatican or something like that. Of course, rumors of an affair w/Sulzberger or perhaps even being married to a non-Catholic could have excluded her from that assignment. She could have gotten Ambassador to France, a la Pamela Harriman, and that would have been a smart move.
Now, I think she has little option but to stay in NYC and go back to her very low profile, try to redeem her reputation.