For some reason, Sen. Ted Kennedy’s advocacy of a law giving the governor the power to appoint a temporary successor should he die in office has become a kind of litmus test for journalists at liberal-leaning organizations who want to seem independent. On Sunday, the Boston Globe‘s Joan Venocchi attacked the plan as “an example of raw politics as usual.” (See my previous post.) Now NPR political editor Ken Rudin is also condemning the idea as “politics as usual.”

Again, the argument seems to be the Democratic Legislature would be hypocritical to give an appointment power to Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick only a few years after taking it away from Republican Gov. Mitt Romney. That much is true. But Venocchi and Rudin seem to go farther, implying that because the law was changed once because of political motives, it can never be changed again.

Rudin writes that to change the law again “would compound the blatantly political move the Democrats pushed through in ’04.” But if a law is passed for “blatantly political” reasons, isn’t it at least possible that it’s a bad law that should be amended? Yes, it would be outrageous for the Democratic Legislature to change the law yet again in response to the election of Republican governor, but I think there’s a legitimate debate in 2009 about what the law should be. (In 2004, there were small-d democratic reasons for the Legislature to institute special elections so that a governor couldn’t appoint a senator for up to six two years in case of a sudden vacancy, but the legislative leaders overreached in not even letting the governor fill the seat for the few months it would take to hold a proper election.)

But Rudin pretty much says that the merits of Kennedy’s proposal are irrelevant:

…the argument here is not about whether a governor has the right to fill a vacancy. It’s about changing the law for a clear political reason.

Surely, all changes to laws are done at least partly for political reasons. When Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats passed civil rights legislation, and when Ronald Reagan and the Republicans enacted lower tax rates, they fully intended for their respective parties to benefit politically. The idea that legislation should be passed only when no one party or individual would benefit politically seems to rule out pretty much any legislation of consequence.

One can certainly argue that appointed US senators are never a good idea, no matter how long they serve. But that’s an argument that should be made on its own, and it’s not made merely by saying that “politics” is bad.

Again, I predict that if the Legislature declines to change the law, Kennedy dies in office, and health care reform is defeated by one vote in the Senate, no historian is going to be crediting anyone on Beacon Hill with integrity.