If the Kennedy Mystique and Money do not overwhelm New York Governor David Paterson and convince him to appoint Caroline Kennedy to fill out the remaining two years of Hillary’s term, a gay, disgraced, former Catholic priest will.

(Former) Father Charles O’Byrne is the hidden player in this saga who will broker this deal.

How?

O’Byrne is unusually close to both the Kennedy Family and Governor Paterson. In fact, he was the New York Governor’s Chief of Staff (entitled Secretary in New York political parlance) for the past year until it was revealed that he had not filed tax returns for five years. That scandal forced him from the job amid revelations of “chronic depression” and cash payments to gay lovers. But he remains an extraordinarily influential Paterson adviser.

O’Byrne also has served as an “inside spiritual adviser” to the Kennedy Family for years - and conducted several weddings for them.

This behnd-the-scenes two-way connection is the real reason Governor Paterson will appoint Caroline to the Senate.

It is, of course, a total farce that she would even be considered for this Senate seat.

Despite the spin that she has been involved in issues for years, the plain fact of the matter is that she has been a Park Avenue Society Mother and Wife - and has had nada to do with any public issues.

If her name was just Caroline Schlossberg - which it used to be but that married name has suddenly disappeared - with the exact same resume, who would possibly think she could be appointed to this soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat?

Ironically, Hillary Clinton’s ascendancy to this seat in 2000 actually helps Caroline by creating a recent precedent for a liberal female rookie to parachute into New York State - replete with instant entourage and a pre-packaged Listening Tour. Already Caroline has started traveling to foreign lands (for her) - upstate New York - and is surrounded by aides and handlers with one assignment: do not let her suffer the fate of the mouthy Sarah Palin and thus talk herself into trouble.

Rochester, Syracuse and Buffalo will see this circus this week.

And all along you can bet that Team Paterson is watching and waiting - for a mistake or a reason not to pick her. Paterson - who has not yet been elected statewide on his own - is acutely aware that in this deteriorating economy he could rapidly be blamed by an angry electorate for the rotten condition of the New York State economy. And, even though today it seems unimaginable, it is possible the New York State GOP could re-appear out of somewhere and field a candidate to take him on in 2008.

So, Paterson has to be seeing that a Kennedy-Paterson ticket in 2010 is almost un-beatable.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has called Paterson and urged him to appoint Caroline. Obviously President-Elect Obama owes Caroline Big Time for her timely endorsement last winter and her Veep Selection work.

Paterson - and New York - need federal money pored into the state as the Wall Street Melt-Down has deprived the State and City of billions in tax revenue. Who better to go to Reid and Obama and plead for it than Caroline Kennedy?

On the other side of the ledger, Paterson is hearing from every other Democratic politician in New York - and they are all aghast at the thought of this dilettante cutting the line and getting this plum job.

State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the son of the former Governor - and a former first cousin by marriage of Caroline’s - is the other most prominent name rumored for this Senate slot.

There are also several female Representatives and up-staters who want the job.

If Paterson picks Caroline - yes, it will help him get re-elected/elected in 2010 - but it will infuriate virtually every elected Democrat in the state.

So Paterson will wait a while for Hillary to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate - sometime in late January or early February. She will then resign the Senate seat. And Paterson will have to make his decision.

Does he deny the Kennedys - and Harry Reid - and Barack Obama?

Or does he tell members of his own party in New York that he is bypassing them all just to pick a Big Name?

When Decision Day comes, Governor Paterson will not be alone in his deliberations; his long-time mentor and aide, Father O’Byrne, will be brokering this deal to help both the Kennedys and the Governor.

Look for Caroline Kennedy to get the appointment - thanks to O’Byrne.

John LeBoutillier will be on IMUS IN THE MORNING tomorrow, Friday, December 12th, at 7:30 AM.

Please listen!!!

The political word was set on its ear last week by the report that Caroline Kennedy might be interested in being appointed to fill Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat in New York.

Clearly the entire Kennedy Family is putting a major push on to get New York Governor David Paterson to appoint the daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy.

Bear in mind that Caroline has never done one thing politically in her life until endorsing Barack Obama earlier this year.

But, because of her last name and her family’s history, she can call Governor Paterson just “for informational purposes about the Senate” - or so we are told by the Governor himself. I know major political figures in New York who cannot call the Governor and get him on the phone - but Caroline Kennedy can get him to explain to her rudimentary facts about what the Senate does and how this selection works!

Caroline has three children who are almost grown up and, according to a source in yesterday’s New York Post, “She’s looking for a mission in life. Preferably in politics.”

So someone from a “royal” political family - in the midst of a mid-life crisis - can just choose whether or not she can be a US Senator. Wonderful. Only in America.

This is, of course, a total farce. Serious people who have worked in the political vineyards are aghast at this recent trend in American politics: the Bushes, the Clinton and the Kennedys all have dominated national politics because of the power of name ID.

In politics today you have to buy name identification through huge and expensive amounts of TV and radio advertising. But if you already have a famous last name, i.e. a Bush, Clinton or Kennedy, then you have already leap-frogged ahead of regular, normal politicians. (Or you could be like Barack Obama: the national news media, book publishers, and the political establishment gives you national name ID - even though you have done nothing to earn it.)

So Caroline Kennedy, in the middle of a mid-life crisis, gets up one days and muses that she might just want to be a Senator. So she calls Governor Paterson, this incredibly busy man faced with massive budget problems and an economic meltdown on Wall Street which is costing the state a huge loss of tax revenue - his staff puts her right through of course because she is “Caroline Kennedy!” - and she then asks him to brief her on what exactly is involved in the naming of Hillary’s replacement.

Incredible.

These people think these jobs are theirs by right. Not merit. Whatever happened to doing it the “old fashioned way” - earning it?

Let’s be clear about something: Hillary Clinton would not have been a senator nor a presidential candidate nor now the Secretary of State-Designate if she had not been married to a former President. Period. For all her ‘feminist’ positions, she has risen up the ladder of the law (Rose Law Firm) and politics because of one thing and one thing only: she was Bill Clinton’s wife.

And when she has been allowed to run something on her own - health care reform in 1993-1994 and her 2007-2008 presidential campaign - she proved to be an incompetent, inept, failed manager. Period. But, oddly, few in the media write that, do they?

Similarly, Caroline Kennedy has done nothing to warrant her consideration to be a US Senator. Nothing at all. And yet it seems as if she asks for it she will get it.

Hopefully Governor Paterson, a good and wise man who has lived a difficult life due to almost-total blindness from early childhood, can somehow escape the pressure being applied on him by Teddy Kennedy and Robert. F. Kennedy, Jr., both of whom are out actively campaigning for Caroline’s appointment.

If he succumbs to this pressure, we will see the so-called mainstream media slobber all over Caroline Kennedy and treat her as if she is the Second Coming. Her lack of experience and knowledge will be extolled as a virtue. And any mistakes she makes will be glossed over.

(No wonder so many people can’t stand the newspapers or TV anymore. And no wonder the media is going broke, too. Their bias has turned off so many readers and viewers.)

America was created as a rejection of inherited power. Yet, somehow, we keep drifting back to it.

Last week’s Bloomberg News report that the Federal Reserve had pledged/backed up/loaned $7.6 trillion - yes, that is trillion - to shore up our faltering national economy opened a whole new set of previously unanswered questions:

• How much money does the Fed have?

• Where is it?

• What backs it up? Gold? Treasury Bills? What?

• Where does it come from? These are not tax dollars appropriated by the Congress - so where do these massive funds - equal to half the annual GDP - come from?

• Who controls these funds? Do we, the American People, have any direct say in what happens to these funds?

• Is there any hands-on oversight by our elected officials over the people who run and control these funds?

• Are there any checks and balances - the ruling governmental principle of our system - over the mysterious people who run this equally secretive - and apparently more-massive-than-any-of-us-knew system?

• How much money does the Federal Reserve have?

• Where does it come from?

• Whose money is it?

• And if it is trillions and trillions, then why the big fight last September for a mere $750 billion for the TARP program that Henry Paulson, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd cobbled together and threatened Congress into passing? Why use public tax dollars for this when the Fed apparently has this inexhaustible supply of money?

• Is the truth that the Fed just prints whatever they need - and they keep that fact secret from us? (I have read that they stopped publishing the money supply numbers a while ago.)

• And if that is true - that they just print more and more money - won’t that lead to terrible inflation, perhaps the single most destructive economic ill of them all?

• Ask any two people - even knowledgeable, educated, financial types - and you will not get the same answers to these questions.

• Many have claimed for years that the Fed was bad news for our economy, responsible for inducing the Boom-and-Bust cycles that have enriched and impoverished so many.

• Our staggering - and growing - national debt, which is now about $11.5 trillion and sure to increase because of the ongoing Financial Meltdown, is a huge drag on our economy. Plus, the interest payment is the second largest item in our federal budget - over $500 billion annually. Can these Fed funds be used in any way to alleviate this burden?

• The media has done a horrible job translating this Federal Reserve system into understandable English for all of us. Clearly they do not understand it either. But they need to be asking these questions of our elected and appointed officials - from Bush and Obama to Paulson and Geithner and to the leading Members of Congress. We have to wonder if most of them know any more about this than the average guy or gal does.

Conclusion: our economy is teetering on the abyss of collapse - and yet none of us know what we need to know as citizens about our own government and our own financial system. Why? Because the system itself is secretive, “off-the books” and so complicated as to go over the head of almost everyone. But that is very, very dangerous.

This has to change. And soon.