They might as well have elected the cat.

It does not surprise me in the least that the witless Patrick Kennedy is now on his way to the Mayo Clinic for rehab, a day after his late-night D.C. fender-bender.

I have a confession to make: I have always despised Patrick. He is by far the dumbest Kennedy to ever walk the earth -- and there are quite a few dumb ones out there. His election to Congress was a travesty engineered by his family and rich friends, an insult to the Kennedy name. Patrick doesn't stand for anything, doesn't believe in anything, and he didn't even campaign for the seat himself. He stood around and smiled stupidly while a bevy of political all-stars stumped on his behalf. They gave him that congressional seat, the way you give a dumb kid an easy job at the family business.

That's not how it's supposed to work.

The very least Patrick could have done to show his gratitude was to keep his mouth shut and stay out of trouble. But the kid's a screw-up. Everybody knows it. And so now here he is, in trouble, embarrassing his family and his friends.

And proving what any student of history knows: that it doesn't matter what a great king might achieve. Because it will all be pissed away by his heirs, sooner or later anyway.