Opinion - by Ned Resnikoff on Monday, September 15, 2008 15:15 - 4 Comments
Joe Lieberman is Not a Magical Bipartisan Unicorn
I don’t know where WSN’s Anne Werner got the idea that Joe Lieberman is “still philosophically and somewhat politically a Democrat” (whatever “somewhat politically” means), but he’s not. He’s a mean old Republican hack of the Richard Nixon school who caucuses with the Democrats solely for reasons of political expediency - and I can’t wait for an expanded Democratic majority to show him the door after this election (full disclosure: I spent seven months in high school trying to help show him the door as a communications intern for his 2006 Democratic challenger, Ned Lamont).
According to Werner, the undecided voter is going to recoil with horror at the idea of expelling someone from a party caucus merely for insufficient “party loyalty” - but isn’t loyalty to the principles that define that party sort of the point of having a caucus in the first place? The Republicans, perfectly reasonably, wouldn’t want someone who spoke at the DNC sitting in on their strategy meetings, so I’m not sure why the Democrats are expected to accommodate the guy who co-sponsored a backdoor amendment for war with Iran. The only nominally nonpartisan leadership position Lieberman would lose is his plum chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, where his primary role has been to shield the Bush administration from anything approaching accountability.
If you want to see the way that committee should be run, and how badly Lieberman’s botched it, look at its counterpart in the House: the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman. Waxman’s pursued a number of aggressive investigations into governmental waste and fraud, including, perhaps most notably, an investigation of the mercenary firm Blackwater after their employees gunned down 17 people in the middle of a public square.
Lieberman, on the other hand, has conducted investigations of … well, not a whole lot, and his primary achievement as chair of the committee has been mixing up the seating arrangement so that Republicans and Democrats are mingled together.
Once more, with feeling: during a period of unprecedented corruption and abuse of power in the executive branch, the head of the Senate’s chief oversight apparatus established his legacy by changing the damn seating chart.
“Country over party?” Please. If Lieberman can’t put aside his love of the far right for long enough to hold a decent hearing on White House corruption, then he isn’t fit to serve in either party caucus.
Photo by Flickr user NewsHour used under a Creative Commons license.
4 Comments
Annie Werner
First of all, by “politically democrat,” I meant that he actually claims the Democratic party as his own and has typically supported them in the past. But honestly, for the purpose of my article, I don’t care why he is a Democrat, or even if he really is a Democrat at all.
I reaIly think my article was a little misunderstood–which is my fault as a writer. The point was not to idolize Lieberman in any way, as the title of your article implies. I think he’s just sour grapes. I don’t care what Joe Lieberman thinks, feels, or does– as I expressed in my article. If the Democrats want to oust him for the reasons you mentioned above, such as shielding the Bush administration’s lack of accountability, that would be perfectly fine with me. However, the only reason they are trying to trash him is because he went against the grain of the party by not supporting Obama. This implies that they place a huge emphasis on how closely a politician follows their guidelines, not the quality of the person’s credentials. If they had used the fact that Joe Lieberman has done nothing of value as a chairman as grounds for “showing him the door,” I would not be complaining. So thank you for spending 85% of your article on a subject that did not pertain to mine.
There is a reason we can make amendments to the Constitution. It’s not perfect. We would never be able to make our Constitution better if we didn’t allow for different ideas. No need to mention slavery or prohibition, but I will anyway. If a party’s goals are truly in the best interest of the country, they would not base their “principles” on which candidate a politician endorses.
Since the landscape of politics in the U.S. relies heavily on the existence of parties, I feel that they should act in the the same way the constitution does. The point of my article was to comment on how I feel party loyalty plays too large of a role in politics– especially during an election– by simply using a recent example.
I hate parties. And if “loyalty to the principles that define that party” is the point of having a caucus, I don’t want any part of it.
Annie - as I mentioned above, it’s not just that Lieberman supported McCain but that he’s a McCain adviser. Members of the Democratic caucus get to sit in on Democratic strategy meetings, and I don’t think there’s anything unreasonable about not wanting a member of a Republican presidential campaign attending those.
Besides, these endorsements don’t happen in a vacuum - Lieberman’s decision to endorse McCain was an expression of his values, which are surely not in line with those of the rest of the Democratic Party.
My point in mentioning his terrible performance as committee chair was to place this whole debate in context - I think it’s a gross oversimplification to say that the Democrats are considering booting him from the caucus only because of his endorsement. The endorsement was just another reflection of how far he’s strayed from the caucus. As a longtime CT resident, I can tell you that this has been years in the making.
Chris Kennedy
+1 Ned
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Nice response. I think you nailed it very well.
I’m still sore at Lieberman for trying to ban Sega videogames like Night Trap. The game was a cheesy vampire game, but he treated it like hardcore pornography. His pro-war stance was the last straw for me.