Adele M. Stan is a regular contributor to IntellectualCapital.com. She is the Washington correspondent for Working Woman magazine.

Earlier this month, first Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, the apparent Democratic candidate for New York's senatorial race, got some unexpected help from GOP gadfly William Weld, the former Massachusetts governor. Clinton had yet to unpack the boxes delivered to her pricey new digs in Westchester County when Weld announced his impending move to the Empire State, along with his intention to at least ponder the possibility of moving into the governor's mansion in Albany -- New York, that is -- when the term of its current occupant, George Pataki, expires in 2002.

Throughout the "exploratory" phase of her expected Senate campaign, the charge most loudly leveled against the first lady is that she is a "carpetbagger," a term used during the Reconstruction era to describe the Northern opportunists who descended on the decimated South to plunder its riches. Earlier this week,New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser used the term to describe not only Clinton, but the Rev. Al Sharpton, as well, on account of the fact that Sharpton commutes to his New York office every day from his home in New Jersey. ("Two Carpetbaggers Seal Deal With a Kiss" read the headline on Peyser's piece about Clinton's Martin Luther King Day meeting with the blustery minister.)

A substantial portion of Manhattan's workforce could be described as carpetbbagers

Now, there is plenty not to like about Sharpton, who has fashioned himself as a political leader in the black communities of the New York metropolitan area, but by Peyser's standards a substantial portion of Manhattan's work force would fit her description, as they stream into the city each morning via ferry, bus and train from Connecticut and the Garden State.

Equal opportunity

Then there are New Yorkers themselves. In the city, at least, the carpetbagger charge is absurd in a place where, if limited to the employment of the native-born, most industries would simply have to shut down. Forget about getting a cab or finding an open newsstand. Most of the glossy magazines edited in New York would be absent their chiefs, a significant portion left to fill their afternoons with tea and scones at the Royalton Hotel.

Outside the Big Apple, the carpetbagging charge is no less absurd. Upstate, in the economically depressed rural towns and decaying rust-belt cities, New York City itself is viewed as a foreign country, a place ruled by slick wackos whose primary purpose is to keep federal dollars within the city's own boundaries for the benefit of its wacko populace and at the expense of the region's former farmers and factory workers who are trying to figure out how to survive their bleak prospects. While New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Clinton's likely Republican challenger, hones his tough-guy, native New Yorker personality to amusing effect, the people of upstate are hatching plans to attract large businesses to their empty industrial parks, hoping for an influx of outside investment and executives that will elevate the living standards of the native citizenry.

Carpetbagger nation

When you get right down to it, we are a nation of carpetbaggers. It may have been a dream of the Founding Fathers to create a nation ruled by citizen-legislators rooted in the very soil from which they sprang, but it was one of them, Thomas Jefferson, who set us on our current carpetbagging course with the Louisiana Purchase. Westward expansion accelerated the American ethos of seeking opportunity wherever ye may find it, regardless of who was there first. (If you don't believe me, ask a Native American.)

Today, the nature of our economy all but demands a carpetbagging mentality. How many of you, dear readers, still live near the place in which you were born? High-tech workers flock to Boston, Silicon Valley or Northern Virginia. If you want to design automobiles, you'd better learn to love Detroit. Is book publishing your bag? I will bet you are in a New York state of mind. And this is nothing new. It has been this way for the last 100 years. This commentator would not even exist were it not for a fortuitous transfer, in the 1920s, of her grandfather from the Western Electric factory in Kearney, N.J., to the one in Chicago, where he met the woman who became his bride. Why should politicians be held to a different standard?

People who hold high office are essentially hired by an electorate to represent its interests. And though we may debate the merits of the professionalization of politics as an industry, the fact is that no one but a political pro can afford the time it takes to run for high office, and no one but a political pro can even begin to understand how to work a political system that has grown to mind-boggling complexity. In this environment, it makes rather good sense to conduct a nationwide search for the job of elected official.

Imagine, for a moment, that the people of New York set out to write a job description for the position of governor. Would it be such a bad idea to look at a candidate who has substantial experience running another Northeastern state with a diverse economy and a mix of urban and rural problems? In the Senate, would it be so awful to bring in an outsider who understands the problems besetting the health-care system, has a keen comprehension of poverty issues, and knows her way around Washington?

Voter to politican: Fax me your resume. Then, let's talk.