Caroline Kennedy’s desire to succeed New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton , after the latter’s expected confirmation as secretary of State in the Barack Obama administration, has gotten plenty of media attention. It has also prompted gusts of blowback from critics.

What, they argue, is Kennedy’s claim on the appointment, which Democratic Gov. David A. Paterson will soon make to fill Clinton’s seat until a special election that will be held in November 2010?

Kennedy is a Columbia law school grad who heads the foundation associated with the JFK presidential library in Boston. She has raised money for public schools in her longtime home of New York City and has been involved in other charitable and civic activities. But even though Kennedy has been famous since she was a little girl frolicking in the Oval Office during the presidency of her father, the late John F. Kennedy, she is first seeking to enter the political fray at age 51.

New York is one of the most Democratic-dominated states in the nation, in which the party will hold all major statewide offices, 26 of its 29 U.S. House seats, legislative control even in the New York Senate that long was the most resilient of the state’s Republican bailiwicks, and most major local offices. A number of elected officials have stated their own interest in obtaining the Senate appointment or are being touted by allies for the position. What, then, is Kennedy’s qualification besides the celebrity attached to her famous name?

The answer to that question may be found in a glance at the recent roster of senators who have held this newly contested seat. As a native New Yorker and a longtime reporter on the state’s politics, I had been under the impression that a famous name and no previous elective experience WAS the major qualification to hold that seat.

The only one of the five most recent occupants of the seat who did not fit that description was Republican Charles E. Goodell, who had spent more than eight years in the U.S. House. And he was appointed following the June 1968 assassination of Democratic Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

RFK, a brother of the slain president and uncle of Caroline, had been a Senate staffer and U.S. attorney general under JFK, but had never run for public office himself before his 1964 victory over one-term New York Republican Sen. Kenneth B. Keating. Goodell ran for a full term in the seat in 1970, but was upset by New York Conservative Party nominee James Buckley — a lawyer, businessman and brother of much-better known conservative journalist William F. Buckley — whose only previous candidacy was as a third-party also-ran in the 1968 New York Senate race.

Buckley lasted just one term before he was defeated as the 1976 Republican nominee by another celebrated non-officeholder, Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan. A renowned intellectual and author whose appointed positions included ambassador to India and the United Nations under Republican presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, Moynihan, too, struck political gold in his first bid as a candidate.

Moynihan settled in for 24 years, a four-term tenure that is the longest of anyone who has ever held that seat. But when he decided not to seek re-election in 2000, New Yorkers opted not for one of the many experienced officeholders in the state. Instead, they elected Clinton, still first lady to President Bill Clinton, and someone who had never run for office before. She wasn’t even a New Yorker — she established state residency for the first time in her life shortly before launching her Senate campaign.

Yes, Clinton and most of her predecessors were deeply immersed in politics before they became full-fledged politicians in their own right. But the famous names they brought into their initial races were obviously key to their election successes. And the same argument being made by many against Caroline Kennedy — that she lacks the legislative experience to hit the ground running in the Senate — was made against several of the seat’s previous occupants, and voters shrugged.

New York, of course, is not the only state where celebrity has proven a political charm. California in 1966 elected an actor and first-time Republican candidate named Ronald Reagan as governor, setting him on a trajectory that landed him two terms in the White House. The current Republican governor is another former movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger , who happens to be part of the extended Kennedy clan as husband to Maria Shriver, Caroline Kennedy’s cousin and a longtime TV newswoman.

When Texas voters in 1994 gave their governorship to Republican businessman George W. Bush , son of former President George Bush, his only previous political experience was losing a U.S. House bid in 1978.

Caroline Kennedy’s skeptics are absolutely right to raise questions about whether she is the best-suited among the many would-be appointees to the Hillary Clinton Senate seat. They are right to demand that she be more forthright about where she stands on the long list of issues with which the new Congress will be dealing in this particularly difficult time in the nation’s history.