Lieberman Has Always Been Predictable
Peter Beinart is right when he says that Lieberman’s opposition to the public option is driven to a large degree by personal bitterness, but he begins with the odd claim that Lieberman was once an “interesting” “iconoclast” and has now become a “right-wing pol.” I suppose there was a relatively brief time when Lieberman’s combination of domestic liberalism and hawkishness abroad was different and interesting inside the Democratic Party, but most of Lieberman’s career has spanned the last two decades when this combination has been more or less the one preferred by party leaders.
Looked at from either side of the spectrum, Lieberman has been anything but interesting. He has been the reliable defender of the “centrist” consensus established in the ’90s that finally accepted welfare reform and insisted on U.S. hegemony abroad. In practice, this “centrism” can be used to justify the most extreme, violent and destructive policies, but it is considered reasonable and acceptable because it does not partake of “fringe” ideas and enjoys the support of respectable, “serious” people. The trouble for liberals who accept this consensus is that they feel a constant pull to align themselves with corporate and financial interests in addition to endorsing every military action and security measure imaginable.
What has embittered Lieberman was not just the decline in his personal political fortunes inside his party, but it was also his recognition that the party that had been dominated by New Democrats was increasingly coming under the influence of progressives. Even if the increase was minimal, Lieberman found it intolerable, and he has penned more than a couple of op-eds decrying the supposed abandonment of his party’s national security tradition. In fact, the shift in the party’s foreign policy has been negligible, and Lieberman’s tantrums have been unnecessary, but this is what has pushed him in the direction he has gone. While most on the left were in some respects radicalized during the Bush years and even many liberal hawks were forced to question some of their assumptions, Lieberman showed time and again that his priority was always the promotion of his deeply misguided foreign policy views, and in practice this meant identifying closely with the Bush administration and its supporters. It was this, along with his own pride and ambition, that drove him to run an independent Senate campaign in 2006 (because the antiwar Lamont had to be stopped), and it was the same thing that led him into McCain’s presidential campaign.
Over time, he found that all of his strongest defenders were to be found among hawks in the GOP, and most of his fiercest critics were within his own party. It has become easier to side with his new friends rather than with other Democrats. In this way, Lieberman is just like McCain, whose flirtations with the Democratic Party and the occasional liberal legislative initiative were similarly driven by bitterness over his experience in the 2000 primaries. Arguably, the health care fight ought to have pulled Lieberman back into his party’s orbit and could have won him new respect among the party rank-and-file, but the problem is that he is too much like McCain. They both have an unusually inflated estimate of their own importance, they both tend towards sanctimonious moralizing, and they enjoy the attention they receive for breaking with their party leaders. The more contentious the issue, and the more the party’s base wants something, the more attractive breaking ranks becomes. The health care debate was too tempting.
Domestic policy is secondary to both McCain and Lieberman, and they take their positions on it based on what will make them appear “independent-minded” and secure their “centrist” reputations. He cannot emphasize his unflagging hawkishness as McCain did when the latter needed to rehabilitate himself with Republican primary voters, and the habits of years of hewing to the “centrist” line have finally made it impossible for him to align himself with progressives in a major domestic policy debate.
10 Responses to “Lieberman Has Always Been Predictable”
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Lieberman and McCain certainly have their problems, but I think bad judgment is almost as likely an explanation as simply being reflexively contrarian, although you make a strong case for their focus on big, important, high profile policies.
Another explanation that better fits the circumstances and makes more sense, is that the economy of Connecticut is hugely tied to the insurance industry, which is not a fan of the public option. Simply taking care of his big doners and constituents, even if the nation may suffer.
Fast Jimmy is too fast, he beat me to the Senator from Aetna point. Also, I think this post relies too much on personal psychology to explain decisions. For instance, most Senators “have an unusually inflated estimate of their own importance [and] tend towards sanctimonious moralizing.” Maybe Lieberman and McCain have this in spades, but everybody else has it in diamonds.
Fast Jimmy (and NS)’s theory is certainly supported by how strongly and publicly the rather damaged other Senator from Aetna (Dodd) has also worked to sabotage the public option.
For whatever reason – I have my useless theory just likely everybody else but I won’t bore you with it – the insurance companies don’t achieve quite the level of fealty among the Democratic establishment as some other parts of the financial sector.
I’m with Daniel in seeing this more as just another Lieberman tantrum. And I interpreted Daniel as meaning “unusually inflated estimate of their own importance” relative to other senators, for which I do think McCain and Lieberman are the clear league leaders. Ditto on sanctimonious moralizing, I think, though I agree the standings might be a little more clouded there.
But let me throw it back on you, NS –
I’ll give you some reasonably high profile senators that haven’t struck me as sanctimonious moralizers in the McCain/Lieberman fashion nor as having inflated estimates of their own importance (other readers’ nominations welcome) – feel free to give examples of where they were at least within striking range of the terrible duo for self-importance or sanctimony over the last say ten years:
Webb, (Bob) Bennett, Kyl, Feingold, Tester, Lugar, Hatch, Brownback
[...] Larison: [...]
Several years ago, sometime before Lieberman left the Democratic Party, I had an argument with someone on Wikipedia over whether Lieberman was a DINO. I pointed to his strong record with the Americans for Democratic Action, and his weak record with the American Conservative Union. I then compared him to John McCain, in that both are widely perceived as mavericks, perhaps closet members of the opposing party, when in reality their voting record is more in line with their party than is commonly thought.
This is what the person I was talking to said: McCain, unlike Lieberman, has shown that he cares about the health of his party. I think this person was onto something. McCain, for all his faults, has shown considerable loyalty to the GOP. What’s stunning about Lieberman–and a major reason why he’s so disliked–is that he has never shown any real loyalty to the party, even when he was in it.
Back during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Lieberman discovered that he could appear on television as often as he wanted as long as he was willing to scold his fellow Democrat Bill Clinton. Gore picking him as his running made only confirmed his belief that being a scold was his ticket to relevance. Now, scolding Democrats is his sole reason for existence.
God knows I don’t want to advocate intra-party purges but is it too much to ask that the Democrats pull the plug on the cretin’s committee assignments? Does he have the inside dope on Harry Reid’s sex life or something? The progressive base really loathes the man with a passion as do I. How in the name of Heaven does this odious hack hang on?
bayesian (fan of Thomas Bayes?), you’re right, not everybody in the Senate is insufferable, in fact, “most” goes too far. My main point was not to use personal psychology too much to explain decisions. As for your list, without dredging up examples, I would knock Kyl and Brownback off your list, but I don’t like their politics much, so I’m biased against them. As for the good guys and gals, I’ll list:
Durbin, Voinovich, Whitehouse, Murray, Alexander. When Graham first came up, I thought well of him, but those days are a distant memory now. As for future good guys, watch out for my homie, Al Franken. He’s decent to the core right now, hope the Senate doesn’t change that.
in short, lieberman suffers from the same condition as many others in DC–he cannot afford to be an honest person. the first symptom is IGMFU.
Lieberman’s loyalties are to Israel and the Streets: Wall Street; Bank Street; Finance Street; Military Street; Money Street. He has no allegiance to Main Street or Rural Routes. Add to this that he routinely places the interest of another state [Israel] ahead of the interests of the U.S. so he is nothing more, or less, than a traitor. There’s no need to psychoanalyze him any more than another other pol except to note that his sociopathy is stronger than most. The best punishment would be to lock him in a room and have him watch and listen to his own, whiny, self. Like most political careers his is ending as a failure. A well-deserved one at that. The successor to the position he has found/created will be Evan Bought err Bayh.