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Caroline Kennedy To Be Ambassador To Japan? Talk Grows

Caroline Kennedy in May 2012.
Brian Snyder
/
Reuters /Landov
Caroline Kennedy in May 2012.

There's been chatter in Washington for the past month or so about Caroline Kennedy being tapped to be the next ambassador to Japan.

On Monday, that talk ramped up with reports from CNN, ABC News and The Washington Post's In the Loop blog that President Obama wants JFK's daughter to be his envoy in Tokyo.

CNN says that Kennedy, 55, is "being vetted for the post."

As The Atlantic Wire notes, "Kennedy was a very important donor for the Obama campaign in 2008 and again in 2012, when she was a co-chair of the president's re-election campaign."

Kennedy's bio page on the website of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum, describes the daughter of the nation's 35th president this way:

"An attorney and the editor of nine New York Times best-selling books on constitutional law, American history, politics and poetry. She is president of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and a member of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award Committee. ... From 2002–2011, she was vice chair of the Fund for Public Schools, which raised over $280 million to support public school reform and engaged a record number of New Yorkers to volunteer in New York City schools."

According to the Boston Globe, current Ambassador John Roos "is expected to step down from the post after three and a half years."

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Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.