Try to Explain That to the (Inaudible)
You know Joe Lieberman has been in the Senate too long when he defends Congressional earmarks.
Here's this from the
Lamont-Lieberman debate, via Andrew Sullivan:
LAMONT: Look, you want to boast about how many earmarks you bring to the state of Connecticut? Alaska gets 10 times what we do. We're not doing very well on that front. But more importantly, I think we should outlaw these earmarks.
(CROSSTALK)
LAMONT: Hear me out, sir. I think we should outlaw these earmarks. I think they corrupt the political process. I think they are written by lobbyists and they're wrong.
LIEBERMAN: Try to explain that to the (inaudible).
LAMONT: I think these things should go through the congressional process. Sir, you have been there for 18 years. You support the earmarks, you work with the lobbyists, and that's what needs to be changed.
LIEBERMAN: The earmarks are great for Connecticut.
Shameless.
But that line—"Try to explain that to the (inaudible)"—what a wonderful metaphor for the state of Joe Lieberman's campaign.
Meanwhile,
David Brooks defends Lieberman in today's Times. He calls liberal attacks on Lieberman "the liberal inquisition," and writes:
What's happening to Lieberman can only be described as a liberal inquisition. Whether you agree with him or not, he is transparently the most kind-hearted and well-intentioned of men. But over the past few years he has been subjected to a vituperation campaign that only experts in moral manias and mob psychology are really fit to explain. I can't reproduce the typical assaults that have been directed at him over the Internet, because they are so laced with profanity and ugliness...
Oh, bollocks. (Is that profanity?) Imagine that—politics being laced with profanity and ugliness. Pity we all can't be David Brooks, writing from the safe, secluded confines of his book-lined study somewhere, hiding behind the safe, secure TimesSelect firewall. What's uglier, the attacks on Joe Lieberman, or the devastated bodies of American soldiers being shipped home in wooden boxes?
I'm being hyperbolic, of course. Forgive me, David. But war is not civilized, and the problem with writers like David Brooks is that they lull you into a somnolent discourse in which everything is abstract, everything is sane, everything is reasonable...when what's happening in Iraq is not. It's real and dirty and bloody and tragic and horrible, and Lieberman was an enthusiastic advocate of war there long before that war actually started. So perhaps some people get so upset about that that their passion infiltrates their discourse. The blood of war can do that to a person. David Brooks, the most bloodless of writers, could never understand that.
Not to mention that he's just wrong—that line about Lieberman being the "most kind-hearted and well-intentioned of men" is hilarious. (And surely a sign that Brooks and Lieberman have hobnobbed at a Washington dinner party, or supped expensive cabernet at a D.C. steakhouse, or nibbled on finger sandwiches at a New York Times edit meeting.)
Ask Lowell Weicker, and any number of political opponents, just how kind-hearted Lieberman is. This is a classic example of the national media writing something dumb about a politician they only occasionally pay attention to, when the local beat writers know better. Joe Lieberman is nice when he needs to be, and nasty when he wants to be.
Brooks continues:
...in the midst of the inquisition all of American liberalism has been reduced to one issue, the war. Just as some edges of the pro-life movement reduce all of conservatism to abortion, the upscale revivalists on the left reduce everything to Iraq, and all who are deemed impure must be cleansed away.
It is remarkable to me that Brooks can find a way to condemn people who are getting involved in politics by writing about the subject on the Internet. They're not picketing abortion clinics or shooting obstetricians; they're blogging.
In any event, he's wrong again: It's not just Lieberman's opposition to the war that fuels the sentiment against him. What the most ardent Lieberman-haters despise about him is his sycophantic coziness with Republicans, which, in the minds of many, has less to do with bipartisanship than with his own insatiable lust for power and relevance. (Of course, Brooks
would love any Democrat who cozies up to Republicans; it would confirm his view of the world.)
What Brooks seems most uncomfortable with is the fact that people are angry about Joe Lieberman. They're angry about the war, and they're angry about the state of the country after six years of George Bush and Co.
And the problem with this is?
Brooks thinks that the Lieberman-Lamont race is "a fight about how politics should be conducted," and he wishes that we could all be just a little more polite.
I understand: Anger isn't pleasant to read about or look at, and sometimes it's just plain unfair. But politics isn't always abstract and cerebral, as it is for this thoughtful New York Times columnist. For regular people, it can be a matter of life and death. And after three years of a war based on lies, a war with no end in sight, maybe a little anger is overdue.
David Brooks: Everyone
should just calm down
and be like me.
