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August 06, 2006
Joe Lieberman's Unforgiveable Sin
In the dirty game of politics if every man's hand is against you, you must be doing something right. If ever there were a poster child for that ancient adage, it would be Joseph Lieberman. What has the soft-spoken Senator from Connecticut done to arouse such vitriol? Robert Kagan wonders, too:
Twenty-nine Democratic senators voted in the fall of 2002 to authorize the invasion of Iraq. There isn't enough room on this page to list the Democratic foreign policy experts and former officials, including those from the top ranks of the Clinton administration, who supported the war publicly and privately -- some of whom even signed letters calling for the removal of Saddam Hussein. Nor is there any need to list the many liberal, and conservative, columnists on this and other editorial pages around the country who supported the war, or the many prominent journalists who provided the reporting that helped convince so many that the war was necessary.The question of the day is, what makes Joe Lieberman different? What makes him now anathema to a Democratic Party and to liberal columnists who once supported both him and the war? Why is there now a chance he will lose the Democratic primary in Connecticut after so many years of faithfully serving that state and his own party?
Over the years I've watched Lieberman with great pleasure, deepening respect, and frankly growing disgust at the shabby way he's been treated by his own party. There is a biblical saying attributed to Christ, which perhaps makes it a bit ironic in conjunction with a Jewish Democrat from a Blue State. It says a prophet is not without honor, except in his own country and in his own home. But somehow I think Joe Lieberman would understand and forgive the irony. In fact, when you look at his history, the irony - and the quote - fit him like a glove. Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of the eminently readable New Republic, explains:
Listen to Joe Lieberman's liberal critics and you hear the same lines again and again. He has "betrayed his party" and practiced "turncoat politics." He has "defined his image by distancing himself from other Democrats." He's not a "team player."Funny, that's just what originally drew me to the guy. In early 1991, Lieberman had recently become a senator, and I had recently become one of his constituents. A Republican president named Bush was proposing war against Saddam Hussein, and right-thinking liberals were appalled. At Yale, where I was a sophomore, professors held teach-ins to explain just how immoral and disastrous the impending Gulf war would be. Antiwar protesters picketed Lieberman's New Haven home five separate times. His constituent mail ran overwhelmingly against the use of force.
When it came time to vote, Senate Democrats largely stood together against the war. Only one blue-state Democrat betrayed his party: Joe Lieberman.
And his partisan apostasies didn't end there. From almost the moment Bill Clinton took office, Lieberman challenged him on Bosnia, becoming what The Hartford Courant in May 1993 called "a lone voice" supporting air strikes against Slobodan Milosevic. By the summer of 1995, Lieberman was co-sponsoring a bill to repeal the Bosnian arms embargo with Bob Dole, Clinton's likely Republican opponent. White House spokesman Mike McCurry called the bill "nutty." And, in the Senate, it enjoyed far more Republican than Democratic support. But it helped pressure Clinton to lift the embargo and launch the air strikes that saved Bosnia from destruction.
Democrats proudly point to that moment - the Clintonian intervention in Bosnia - as "proof" liberals can use military force decisively in a humanitarian cause. They cite it as "proof" that international institutions can still work (though notably the UN failed to act in that case and it was reckless and unsanctioned unilateral action by the United States, only retroactively sanctioned by the UN, which saved thousands of Muslims). And that action, notably, was initially opposed by the Clinton administration, which was pressured from inaction to reaction by a principled and immovable Joe Lieberman.
How soon we forget.
Four years later, Lieberman played turncoat again, joining with John McCain to urge the Clinton administration to consider ground troops in Kosovo. Once again, the Clintonites cursed Lieberman and then adopted his view. And the threat of ground troops helped convince Milosevic to fold.On domestic policy, Lieberman was equally disloyal. In 1991, he slammed his party for telling Americans that "we are going to take your money you worked so damn hard to earn, and we are going to give it to a lot of people who don't work." The New York Times said he sounded like Ronald Reagan. But soon, Bill Clinton was sounding like him. When he ran for president the following year, Clinton took up Lieberman's theme, calling for an end to "welfare as we know it" and stressing that government would help people who "worked hard and played by the rules." To some liberals, this verged on racism. But Clinton's vision of a "new covenant" between individuals and government, in which the latter provided opportunity but demanded responsibility, told Reagan Democrats that liberals knew the difference between good behavior and bad.
When it came to Hollywood, Lieberman made a similar point, calling for a "revolt of the revolted" against violence and smut in the media. Many liberals called him a self-righteous prude-- particularly when he joined forces with right-wing moralist William Bennett. But Lieberman understood that many parents saw Hollywood as undermining the values that they badly wanted their children to learn. And they blamed this cultural subversion on liberal elites incapable of distinguishing good values from bad.
Clinton, yet again, picked up Lieberman's theme. Through symbolic measures like the v-Chip and school uniforms, he disassociated liberalism from moral and cultural license. And, when his own behavior disastrously undermined that message, Lieberman was the first Senate Democrat to denounce it. Unlike his liberal critics, Lieberman recognized the threat that Clinton's actions posed to the Democrats standing with culturally conservative, blue-collar voters. Indeed, as party strategists William Galston and Elaine Kamarck have argued, while Clinton overcame the racial gulf separating Democrats from the white working class, he exacerbated a new gulf, centered on religion and culture. And, in trying to bridge it today, prospective presidential candidates like Hillary Clinton are talking about morality and denouncing misogynistic video games--following the path that Lieberman blazed more than a decade ago.
It has become fashionable today to denounce rabid partisanship on Capitol Hill, to wish both parties would work together to find solutions both liberals and conservatives can embrace. And in Joe Lieberman Democrats have a smart, capable, honorable man with a solid history of doing exactly that. Yet it would seem they don't want what they claim to want. Instead they embrace the politics of divisiveness, the methods of Harry Reid and Howard Dean, who pour oil on troubled political waters by assuring their followers they hate the Republicans and everything they stand for. What's up with that?
It has become fashionable to say that politicians talk out of both sides of their mouths, that voters can't trust them to say what they really think. Yet time and time again Joe Lieberman has stood fast for what he believes in, whether or not it agreed with the conventional wisdom or the prevailing sentiment. It would seem that in an untrustworthy world, Lieberman can be trusted to say exactly what he thinks. Could it be that trustworthiness and principled politics are less valued than some would have us believe?
It has become fashionable for politicians to vote for one thing, then recant that vote when subsequent events make their prior views politically inconvenient. Such was the case with the Congressional Authorization to Use Force, which clearly and succintly lays out the contemporary thinking on the current threat Saddam posed as well as his past use of WMDs and his ongoing violations of the UN ceasefire and multiple UN resolutions. It has become fashionable for Senate Democrats like Jay Rockafeller, Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, to pretend they were not pounding the table in the aftermath of 9/11 saying that Iraq posed an imminent threat. But there, sadly, their own words tend to contradict them. But Jay Rockafeller does not seem to have paid a price for his dishonesty. He does not seem to be paying a price for being "wrong" about Saddam, for he has simply washed away his former surety. It never happened, you see.
As Robert Kagan points out, Joe Lieberman's great sin is not that he supports the war.
It is that he refuses to lie about it. He refuses to say what people want him to say.
Lieberman stands condemned today because he didn't recant. He didn't say he was wrong. He didn't turn on his former allies and condemn them. He didn't claim to be the victim of a hoax. He didn't try to pretend that he never supported the war in the first place. He didn't claim to be led into support for the war by a group of writers and intellectuals whom he can now denounce. He didn't go through a public show of agonizing and phony soul-baring and apologizing in the hopes of resuscitating his reputation, as have some noted "public intellectuals."
And if there is one thing that Washington cannot abide, it is the presence of an honest man. Joe Lieberman's refusal to abandon his principles forces them to confront their own hypocrisy. His honesty is a mirror in which their own fecklessness is starkly revealed for all the world to see.
And that is the one thing they cannot forgive.
Posted by Cassandra at August 6, 2006 03:24 PM
Comments
Cass, another home run. You write with such eloquence. You truly have a gift.
Posted by: Unkawill at August 6, 2006 07:02 PM
I agree, great post. The only time Liebeman wasn't true to himself was when he had to adopt the views of AA Gore to be his running mate. Of course no one on the left will fault him for that.
Posted by: Pile On® at August 6, 2006 09:53 PM
Democrats proudly point to that moment - the Clintonian intervention in Bosnia - as "proof" liberals can use military force decisively in a humanitarian cause.
Funny, that; I remember thinking at the time that it was mostly done to draw the public's attention away from the "Zippergate" business.
Rather mercenary, I thought...but then, what are some dead foreigners to an evil bastard like Clinton? Or his "wife", for that matter...
Posted by: camojack at August 7, 2006 01:19 AM
Funny, I guess only Republicans can stick to their principles and get angry at what they call RINOS.
We democrats, however, are supposed to stick to Republican principles I guess. We are not allowed to have our own principles and become angry when someone who claims to represent those values does the opposite.
You may not like our values, but don't you DARE say that we are unprincipled for sticking to them.
Oh, and Kagan is a liar. Gore NEVER supported Bush's Iraq war. Just one more example of that "liberal media" you clowns complain about. LMAO!!! Liberal media indeed.
Posted by: Lisa at August 9, 2006 12:49 PM
Actually Lisa, this author castigated Republicans for doing just what you talk about - complaining about RINOS. So it would seem I'm being intellectually consistent and applying the same principles to your party that I apply to my own side.
And you still haven't addressed my point: why all the love for John McCain if it isn't a case of the end justifies the means? All this high-minded crap about he is such a principled man and that's why Dems love him is garbage. They like him simply because they find his views closer to their own.
Which is fine - admit that openly. Don't cloak it in a lot of self-righteous pablum about non-partisanship and then turn on one of your own for reaching across the aisle.
Posted by: Cassandra at August 9, 2006 01:03 PM
"They like him simply because they find his views closer to their own". Voting for someone because their views are close to your own is consistent with STICKING TO YOUR PRINCIPLES. You do it, and I do it. So what is the problem with that. Voting for someone who's principles are NOT close to your own is weird.
Maybe this is a moot argument. I read your blog enough to know that you would become disgusted with a conservative politician who slowly but surely started sliding voting for things that were not just "moderate" but in outright opposition to the things you hold dear as a conservative. Mr. Leiberman is quite welcome to his principles, and he should be man enough to accept if his principles no longer match those of his electorate. That is how our democracy works.
I like your blog. It is very clever. I laugh even when I am disagree, which is 90% of the time. But I disagree with you so vehemently on this Lieberman thing I just had to say something. Bipartisanship and moderate views are one thing. Voting for the other side consistently no matter what your own electorates wishes are is another. The Iraq thing was just the tipping point.
It is unfair to say that his problems are because we are all crazy wackos. And it is equally unfair to say that we are cloaking our disdain for him in self-righteous blather about bipartisanship. The complaint is that he is not even recognizable as a Democrat to his own constituency. They want a little partisanship (and some spine) from the guy.
The reason Republicans kick ass is because they are nakedly partisan, loyal, and ferociously united. You don't see them timidly consulting the opposition on how they should vote on issues. Republicans have principles that their elected officials stick to. When they don't, they are gone. Period. Republicans are not afraid to stick to those principles even when they are in the minority. They endured being in the minority for many years and did not waver. They just kept the faithful organized and strategized on how to strengthen their position.
Democrats do the opposite. When in the minority, they run in a thousand different directions, offering no alternative to the majority. They are either busy trying to sound like the majority, or sitting around waiting for something interesting to happen. We are sick of it. Thus, the current mood of the party. Unlike most of my fellows, I think we have a long way to go, we are not going to win in 2006 or 2008. But if we keep demanding that our politicians represent our views, we might have a future. That is not "ends justifiy the means" mentality, in my view. That is asking for something more than that, finally.
Posted by: Lisa at August 10, 2006 11:39 AM
Actually Lisa, I don't have any problem with Democrats who don't vote for Lieberman because they disagree with his views.
This is entirely rational, and I agree with you.
The ones who bother me are the ones who *do* mouth pious BS about how the reason they despise Republicans is because we are supposedly naked partisans (as though there were none of that in the Democrat party - come on! Democrats can be pretty tribalistic themselves. There was precious little enthusiasm for Kerry, but they closed ranks quickly enough when the time came) and say they admire McCain because he is "reaching across the aisle in friendship". And I have heard exactly that kind of arrant nonsense from Democrats. I hear it all the time, and I think it is BS. And I agree with you that unless the Dems stick to their principles they will continue to lose elections. Unlike some, I would like to see a strong, viable Democrat party restored - I think that is very, very important in a functioning Republic. Otherwise you get what we have now - a sickly imbalance.
So I think we are basically in agreement - I am just not lambasting ALL Democrats. Just a sector of the party that I think are hypocritical.
Both parties have their hypocrites. I was beside myself with rage at my own party for some of their own antics earlier this year.
Unlike some, I think the strength of any party lies at the center, not at the extremes. I don't want to see the Dems hijacked by the extreme Left and I certainly don't want to see my own party hijacked by the extreme Right.
Posted by: Princess Leia in a Cheese Danish Bikini at August 10, 2006 11:51 AM
The reason Republicans kick ass is because they are nakedly partisan, loyal, and ferociously united.
You weren't around during the Harriet Miers and Immigration Reform debacles were you?
Posted by: Masked Menace at August 10, 2006 12:43 PM
Heh. I was going to bring that up, but I got the shakes just thinking about it.
Wasn't that right before I quit blogging?
Posted by: Princess Leia in a Cheese Danish Bikini at August 10, 2006 12:46 PM