OPINION
8
Hey, Kennedys! 'Enough With the Entitlement'
Dukakis would have been a better choice for Mass. and Patrick
By Harry Kimball
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Posted Sep 24, 09 12:46 PM CDT
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(Newser)
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Ted Kennedy’s seat “is not a Kennedy seat anymore.” His wife could have run. Or his nephew Joe. They chose not to. So why did Massachusetts' governor bow to the wishes of a now-defunct dynasty when choosing a replacement for the late senator? “Enough, finally, with the entitlement,” Boston Herald columnist Margery Eagan writes of the appointment of Kennedy confidant Paul Kirk, made official today. Kirk's ties to the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries, reported elsewhere in the Herald, raise big red flags.
Michael Dukakis would have been a better choice, Eagan argues, and that should have made Deval Patrick’s decision easy, even in the face of pressure from Kennedy's sons. "Neither even lives here. It’s presumptuous. It’s not their business," she contends. "There are thousands of gray-haired, grass-roots, politically active Massachusetts liberals and independents who think Dukakis is one of the last honest and true public servants left."