Caroline Kennedy listens to a reporter's question during a news conference at City Hall in Buffalo, N.Y. on Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2008. (AP)

Post your comments below

Caroline Kennedy was five days shy of her sixth birthday and on her way to a sleepover when she, and the country, got the news that her father, President John F. Kennedy, had been shot. November 22, 1963.

Now, forty-five years later, the woman who most Americans remember as a little girl in the White House, a little girl at a funeral, has put her hand up to join the United States Senate.

Hillary Clinton is headed out, as Obama’s pick for Secretary of State. New York Governor David Paterson will fill the job. Caroline wants it.

This hour, On Point: Caroline Kennedy reaches for the Senate.

You can join the conversation. Does Caroline Kennedy deserve this Senate seat? Are you excited at the thought of a new Senator Kennedy? Or shaking your head? Does America have too many political dynasties?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Ben Smith, senior political reporter and blogger for Politico, where he’s been covering the Kennedy Senate bid. He blogs here.

Carl Cannon, longtime Washington reporter for The Baltimore Sun and National Journal, where he remains a contributing editor, and co-author of “Boy Genius,” a biography of Karl Rove. He’s now Washington Bureau Chief for Reader’s Digest, where he writes the Loose Cannon blog. His Dec. 18 entry is titled “Caroline Kennedy As America’s Princess Leia.” 

Lawrence Leamer, author of “The Kennedy Women,” “The Kennedy Men,” “Sons of Camelot,” and the forthcoming “Madness Under the Royal Palms: Love and Death Behind the Gates of Palm Beach.”

Katha Pollitt, columnist for The Nation and author of “Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories” and “Virginity or Death! And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Time.”