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Obama’s Lieberman Manuever
By Zachary Thacher / November 20, 2008
Need a break from watching the stock market plunge to what some predict will be a DJIA of 6500? Tune into Obama’s neutralization of all potential foes as he in gathers his cabinet and Congressional allies like Lieberman with lightning speed. I suspect the NY Times breathlessly covers the Elected One’s every move, from his AG selection to his BlackBerry-less future (there’s always PinkBerry) because Bush’s been lame ducking since ’06. If we could vote for it, I’m sure we’d have Obama take office yesterday. And give Paulson his walking papers.
Let’s start with Lieberman – a majorly hot button dude for Jews, Dems and moderate Republicans. Dem Liberals had been freaking out about Lieberman’s keeping his chairmanship on the Homeland Security and Gov’t Affairs committee earlier this week. But if you’re a pro-Obama centrist, it’s great news.
Keeping Lieberman’s post intact fulfills Obamas’s pledge to be bi-partisan and lead a United States of America. Remember 46% of all Americans didn’t for Obama. Living up to the president-elect’s rhetoric is a win in private circles as he defangs Congressional Republicans and other oppositional insiders; and in the public as he appears magnanimous and truly post-partisan.
Now for the fun part. It also means Lieberman now owes the Democratic caucus for the remainder of his tenure. Joe better bleed blue on demand, or they’ll downgrade him to whatever it is John Kerry does for a living. (He toils on the highly ignored Small Business committee.) Keeping Lieberman in place retains Obama’s leverage over a foe – leverage delivered by Harry Reid who wanted to can Lieberman ever since he stumped for McCain.
Presumably now Obama owes Reid for this favor… which is a smart Obama calculation. If I were the Elect, I’d rather owe Reid and have Lieberman on the hook, rather than fulfilling Reid’s wish to jettison Lieberman and get nothing in return — since we all know Reid will root for Obama regardless. It’s win-win. It’s intriguing to imagine what Obama promised Reid in return. Maybe, like, keeping HRC’s ambitions away from a Senate leadership position by promoting to the cabinet….? (And, btw, keeping Joe in place makes it convenient to also keep Kerry in place — because if Joe is demoted down to Kerry’s chairmanship then Kerry will expect a promotion up. Talk about inside baseball. This is like a grand slam.)
There’s a small downside to the Lieberman maneuver. Partisan Dems hate Lieberman for his betrayals in the election, especially at the RNC, but those Dems aren’t about to abandon BO, so he can sustain a blip of dissatisfaction from them in the press. Once he appoints a sop to this wing of the party they’ll quiet down.
A few days later the newspapers are full of news about Daschle at Health and Human Services and the first ever black Attorney General – Eric Holder. Talk about change we can believe in. Remember J. Edgar Hoover’s investigations into MLKjr and the FBI’s treatment of the Panthers? Those days are over. Hopefully, forever.
Here’s the big picture: Obama’s creating an American version of a unity government to get us through the mess he inherits from the unbelievable failures of the Bush administration, and to chart a new course as the Reagan Revolution implodes.
He’s slowly coopting the opposition and enthralling the widest base imaginable: Loyal lefty Dems (Daschle at HHS, Holder as AG), Hawkish Dems (HRC in State), Moderates (Lieberman saves face, and power) and pretty soon, Republicans. The conventional wisdom points to Obama’s keeping Gates/Petraeus on the job, probably for the first two years of office. There’s no rush for Obama to wade in these waters (sorry hardcore Dems, he doesn’t actually walk on water) until he has to.
About HRC: We’ll never know what back room deals were made when BO and HRC met in Feinstein’s house in Georgetown this fall. Whatever he promised her, he got a stellar post-primacy performance, including the unanimous delegate sweep at the DNC, and he won the election. Maureen Dowd seems to think that the Sec of State move is smart. The same day Down ran her column, Friedman said he is skeptical. Maybe the appointment will keep the Clintons out of the country and far from the domestic policy sphere where they have influence and weight, which BO and Reid/Pelosi/Kennedy will want to mastermind on their own. But it’s doubtful.
When Obama does come to pass some massive stimulus package that includes craziness like universal health care or green tech investments, he’s going to need every ally he can in Congress — having Joe beholden won’t hurt.
The more I think about Obama, the more impressed I am by his shrewdness. And it’s better than watching the economy fly off a cliff.
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Lieberman is a de facto Democrat. He’d still be a card carrier were it not for the vagaries of Connecticut politics. I think of Joe Liberman like pre-Johnson Democrats thought of the South: loyal party men with one quirk. In the South’s case it was segregration, in Joe’s case it’s Iraq. National Democrats never made civil rights a litmus test for party membership. The South left the Democrats, following the blandishments of the GOP’s Southern Strategy.
Likewise, national Dems, as annoyed as they were with Joe’s support of Bush’s war, recognized that on balance Lieberman has been a dependable team-playing progressive. State politics in the election of 2006 precluded an accommodation, compelling party officials, including Joe’s Connecticut colleague Chris Dodd, to support the winner of the Democratic primary, which Lieberman had lost. Were it not for this turn in state politics, Joe Lieberman today would still be nestled in the party’s bosom.
But some commentators have chosen to make the Iraq a single-issue litmus test of party loyalty. Obama is simply refusing to go down that path. Yes, out of principle, Lieberman campaigned for McCain. And Zell Miller gave a fiery speech at the 2004 GOP convention. Miller never left the party. Nor has Lieberman, except in name. Obviously, that’s good enough for Obama, the bee in Harry Reid’s bonnet nowithsanding.
Lieberman, in suppporting Iraq, was supporing a principle, not a president or a party. Unlike segregation, support for the war in Iraq is a morally defensible position, which Lieberman can most eloquently expound. He may be wrongheaded, but no more wrongheaded than Dick Russell, John Stennis or John McClellan, whose fight against their own pary over civil rights never jeopardized their powerful Senate positions. Even these Dixiecrats who left the party and Harry Truman, in 1948, returned to the fold with their seniority intact.
Of course Joe Lieberman deserves his seniority and chairmanship in the Democratic Senate. It would be foolish to allow the personal pique of Reid and a few others to deny the party Lieberman’s unsurpassed political acumen and, outside Iraq, effective support on the issues Democrats care about.
I think I didn’t make my point clearly enough — I’m not gushing about Obama’s bi-partisanship writ large, he’s clearly a Democrat and will do all he can to run a Democratic administration that’s aligned to the Democratic leadership in Congress. And watch out for judicial appointments from the left side of the aisle.
My main point is that Obama is shrewdly enlarging his base of influence so he can ram some seriously difficult bills through Congress. He needs all the help he can get, and just because there’s this supposed "veto proof" consenus emerging with the Dems, representatives and senators are elected by their constituents back home — the party only takes them so far, so they’re not going to commit political suicide just because the DNC thinks they ought to support a massive tax hike for oil refiners, or whatever issue comes up that could torpedo their career.
 What’s most impressive to me about Obama’s transition to power is that a) it’s working, he’s got more power than any incoming president I can think of, especially considering his fairly lean margin of victory in the popular vote, b) he’s doing so as a Center-Leftist. He ran a primary campaign that was a thrill ride to the Daily Kos//Huffington Post Leftist elite, and now he’s showing his true colors: a man bent on aggregating power to execute a pragmatic (read: centrist) domestic policy. Maybe there are some analysts who predicted Obama’s shape-shifting to a non-ideological centrist, but I never heard from them in the election. (Or maybe, I didn’t want to hear, since I was so sure Obama was Jimmy Carter II.)
Here’s the big picture: Obama’s creating an American version
of a unity government to get us through the mess he inherits from the
unbelievable failures of the Bush administration, and to chart a new course as
the Reagan Revolution implodes.
It takes absolutely zero political shrewdness for Barack Obama to "negotiate" with Reid and Pelosi when the Democrats have a nearly veto proof majority. Can you believe that Democrats are no more averse to wielding total control in Washington than Republicans were? I know, what a surprise.The Democrats also don’t need Joe Lieberman, but since he announced his intention to caucus with the Democrats since 2006, he’s kept his promise. Despite his "scandalous" support for John McCain’s presidential run, they’re willing to accept Lieberman as long as keeps voting with the rest of the Senate Democrats 90% of the time. The anti-Lieberman hysteria is confined to the ideological (read, Daily Kos) wing of the party that has practically zero influence on the day to day decisions made by Reid and Pelosi.
While we’re at it, this gushing over Obama’s "bi-partisanship" is almost as ludicrous as the bitching and moaning during the Bush administration from the left when the odd token Democrat became "tainted" by accepting a role within the Bush administration. You’re not going to find any actual conservatives in the Obama White House any more than you would find any progressives in the Bush White House, and for the same reasons.They neither want nor need each other, and frankly, we should hope it stays that way.
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