Lieberman

by hilzoy

From the Hartford Courant:

"Senate Democrats will decide by secret ballot Tuesday whether to take away Sen. Joe Lieberman's chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee -- a post from which he oversees U.S. security issues, as well as the operations of a wide segment of the federal government."

To my mind, the crucial issue here is whether or not Lieberman has done a good job as chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. If a good chair had done what he did -- if, say, Henry Waxman had unaccountably spent the summer and fall campaigning against Democratic nominees for President and the Senate -- I'd be torn. But Lieberman has not been a good chair:

"A Senate hearing Friday took aim at former Halliburton subsidiary KBR, whose contract work was blamed by witnesses for the electrocution of up to 13 Americans. But the heated hearing also offered ammunition against another frequent target of the left: Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn.

The hearing was held by the Democratic Policy Committee -- the seventh DPC has held on profiteering and waste in Iraq since Democrats regained control of Congress in 2006.

Senate Democrats began the hearings in 2004 to highlight what they called a failure by the Republican-led Senate to oversee war spending. That the partisan panel continues despite Democratic control of the chamber strikes some lawmakers, aides and watchdog groups as a sign of Lieberman's failure to aggressively oversee the Bush administration.

"The reason the DPC is doing this is because Lieberman isn't," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "I think it would just kill him to say anything negative about the Bush administration," Sloan said.

Democratic Policy Committee Chairman Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said he is "not critical of anyone" but called the DPC hearings "the only way for Americans to hear about these issues.""

Lieberman, whose committee is responsible for investigating government, declined to hold hearings on the response to Katrina, saying he didn't want to "play gotcha". Likewise, he didn't want to investigate Blackwater or other Iraq contractors. As far as the oversight part of his committee chairmanship, he was missing in action.

Oversight matters. It mattered during the Bush administration, and it will matter during an Obama administration. (Naturally, I'd be happier if Obama simply never made any mistakes, but I'm not counting on it, and so I want to have a backup plan.) Since Lieberman has shown no signs of wanting to exercise this function, he should not chair the committee responsible for it. Democrats should not be agonizing over this choice; they should be delighted that they have an excuse to remove a dysfunctional chair from an important committee.

There are two more reasons to remove Lieberman from this position. First, suppose Lieberman did decide to get serious about investigating the Obama administration. Given both his complete failure to exercise oversight over the Bush administration and his opposition to Obama's candidacy, it would be very hard to have confidence in his fairness, and very easy for liberals to dismiss anything he said against an Obama administration. And this matters: precisely because I want Obama to be held accountable for any mistakes he makes, I want to make sure that whoever runs this committee is actually fair and credible. I think that one lesson we can draw from the Republicans' time in control of the Congress is that you do your party, your President, and your country no favors at all by supporting them blindly. I therefore think that it would be a huge mistake to put someone whose impartiality is open to serious question in charge of this committee.

Second, Lieberman lent his name to The Third Jihad: Radical Islam's Vision For America., a paranoid film about Islamists' attempt to destroy America from within. From its 'About' page:

"There’s a war going on and the major battles take place right here in America. It’s a hidden war against the freedom and values we all take for granted. The enemy is taking advantage of our country’s democratic process, and using it to further its own aims.

Most people, busy with their daily struggles don’t even realize there’s a war.

And that’s just the way the Radical Islamists would like things to remain.

The Third Jihad is the ground breaking film that reveals the truth. It exposes the destructive aims of Radical Islam and its mounting threat for America and the world. It covers all the major players- the radical extremists and the leaders trying to stop them. The Third Jihad will update you on the most urgent issue of our time in ways you can’t find in the media."

I've watched the clips available on the film's web page. They are full of alarmist accusations against a lot of Muslims and Muslim groups, backed up by things that it would be a real stretch to call "evidence". I therefore agree with Adam Serwer on this one: if Lieberman believes this stuff, he is incapable of telling the difference between ordinary Muslims and terrorists. And that should be an absolute disqualification for a chair of the committee that oversees homeland security, since both our security and the rights of American Muslims depend on our getting this distinction right.

I would not support naming someone who had lent his name to the Council of Conservative Citizens to a committee that oversaw the enforcement of civil rights law. I would not put Lt. Gen. Boykin ("I knew that my God was a real god, and his was an idol") in charge of a committee on religious toleration. This case does not seem to me to be appreciably different, and so I think the same principles apply.

Comments

[publius]

This is more partisan, but I also think it matters A LOT that he campaigned for Republican Senators. The McCain endorsement is bad, but there's at least a plausible argument that it had no effect on control of the Senate.

However, by campaigning against Dems, he should forfeit the right to benefit from the majorities the Democrats won.

That's the last straw for me -- though I agree with the oversight point too. I think he would use his post vindictively b/c he's a petty spiteful man

[Nell]

The linked news item, which repeats previous reporting by Politico and others, leaves no room for ambiguity: Lieberman's committee chairmanship will be decided on by all the members of the Democratic Senate caucus in a vote on Tuesday.

Yet Sens. Feinstein, Brown, and others have been trying to bamboozle constituents who urge them to remove Sen. Lieberman with replies saying that it's too soon to make any decision and that they'll look at the question when the 111th Congress convenes in January. This is a level of insulting constituents' intelligence and me-or-your-lying-eyes-ism that tells me the 111th Congress will be just as effective as the 110th at holding officials accountable for failure, lies, and betrayals.

Gosh, the future's so bright I've gotta wear shades.

[efgoldman]

once upon a time...

...when i was a teenager and becoming a politics junkie, giants strode the halls of the senate.

men like lyndon johnson and mike mansfield. and on the gop side, robert taft and everett dirksen.

how the HELL did we come from that to harry reid, for gosh sake?

if he (reid) had even ONE ball, old turncoat joe would already be on the outside looking in, with his metaphorical nose pressed against the metaphorical glass of the dem's caucus.

i mean, this is just ridiculous. liebeman lost, badly, the dem primary in his state. so he ran on his name and familiarity and the bleeping GOP re-elected him. then he spent the whole year campaigning against the dem prez nominee.

why is it even a close question?

[MeDrewNotYou]

WRT 'mere' political considerations, I think there's some expectation that Obama and the Dems are going to at least investigate and prevent Bush-era corruption, if not prosecute outright. With someone like Lieberman at the helm obstructing any attempt to look into the wrong-doing, Dems look bad by nt working on some of their mandate.

[Ben Alpers]

how the HELL did we come from that to harry reid, for gosh sake?

Better question: how the hell did someone like Harry Reid become Minority Leader, and later Majority Leader?

The Party is at fault here, not just one individual.

[liberal japonicus]

why is it even a close question?

I think one of the reasons is that back in the day, a peon like Lieberman (and some may say 'but he was a VP candidate', which gets us into how the VP position has changed since the days of Johnson) would be essentially a non-entity. Now, there are any number of people who would be eager to mine such an event as Reid handing Lieberman a part of his anatomy, and exploit it, where as if Johnson had done it, the victim would have no recourse but to go off into obscurity.

This is not to defend Reid, but the fact that Lieberman and others like him now have outlets that weren't available back then postpones, if not prevents, some actions from being taken.

[Warren Terra]

MeDrew, I'd be very happy to yield to someone who's actually knowledgeable, but I don't think that Obama needs a subpoena from the Senate to look into past actions by the executive branch once he runs said branch. And if the idea were to set up a commission (likely to resemble the 9/11 Commission more than the Truth And Reconciliation Commission) - and much as I'd like that I doubt it's likely - it would require Congressional action, presumably starting as a bill in a Committee, quite possibly in a Government Oversight Committee, but there's no reason that should be the Senate committee (where Holy Joe might thwart it) rather than the House committee. So, while I believe there are excellent and important reasons Joe should become a backbencher, an ability to thwart investigation by Obama is not so far as I know one of them. Although this still leaves the question of an independent investigation by the Senate, unlikely to happen under Joe. Still, as a Democrat I am accustomed to disappointment and all the signals have been bad, so if as I fear Joe gets to stay on I can only cling to some small hope that rather than it actually being the reflexive capitulation it appears it is more like ths scenario John Scalzi blogged last week (I'd link, but html entered by my phone doesn't work on ObWi).

[liberal japonicus]

WT, was it this? Where there's life, there's hope.

[Warren Terra]

Liberal Japonicus, that's the one. I thank you. Probably not what happened, but, well, a guy can dream ... and the allcaps rendering of the critical word (with which word I shall not sully ObWi) was just priceless.

[KCinDC]

Warren, it's a nice story, I guess, but I don't see how it relates to reality. What leverage would Obama have once Lieberman has the committee chair?

If he gets the chair, the Democrats have given him everything he wanted, he's given up nothing at all, they have no realistic way of keeping him in check, and no Democratic senator has any reason to pay any attention to the leadership in the future because there are zero consequences for even the most flagrant misbehavior.

[Bernard Yomtov]

If he gets the chair, the Democrats have given him everything he wanted, he's given up nothing at all, they have no realistic way of keeping him in check, and no Democratic senator has any reason to pay any attention to the leadership in the future because there are zero consequences for even the most flagrant misbehavior.

Yes. Surely Reid understands this, doesn't he?

[Gary Farber]

It seems to me that taking a vote of the caucus to remove Lieberman as committee chair is a fine way to handle things. If it doesn't go that way, I will definitely complain about the caucus.

But I'm not clear what the objection is now, before the caucus. If the caucus does it, it will be completely clear that it's the will of the majority of Democratic Senators. If Reid were to do it unilaterally, that would threaten all Democratic Senators, and I expect few would appreciate the idea -- assuming Reid could get away with it, since they're perfectly capable of voting him out as Leader by majority vote -- that the Majority Leader can remove any of them from chairing a committee on the Leader's sole authority.

Politics often, surprisingly, tends to involve politics. Including the politics of a caucus.

Similarly, Senators historically get pissed off when a President tries to tell them how to manage an issue of Senate organization, so it seems utterly unsurprising to me that the President-Elect wouldn't take a position on who should or shouldn't be chair of a committee, and leave it to the Senate to be the bad cop, while he stands off and reaps the benefit of seeming the good cop. However he actually feels about what should happen to Joe Lieberman, which he can handle behind the scenes.

Again, politics often involves not doing everything in public.

Mind, if too many Senators object to removing Lieberman as committee chair, I'll be very angry with them, think they've made a dreadful decision, and support punishing them in some way. But I'll wait until Tuesday to see if that happens or not.

[MeDrewNotYou]

Warren- I didn't realize that the House could effectively do the same thing. So, sure, while we nerds (well, me at least) might see a House investigation as good, the Senate carries a lot more weight/prestige. I would guess that most people wouldn't really care about the difference, though, and my concern was mostly with the optics of the whole thing.

Working on the Scalzi article now.

[Another Chris]

The "deal" that's rumored to be in the works is that Lieberman issues some kind of apology or statement of regret in a closed-door caucus session, and then he's allowed to keep his chairmanship.

This seems to me like the dumbest possible thing you could do: Humiliate the guy, and then give him the power to investigate you??

[Hartmut]

There have been suggestions that with the magic 60 being a real possibility some are reluctant to offend Holy Joe because he would be the deciding voice (and thus the natural blackmailer). Thre have even been voices that wish for "just" 57-58 votes (including independents), so Joe could not play the linchpin. Personally I am for throwing him into the outer darkness where there is howling and gnashing of teeth (teeth provided if lacking).

[Coyote]

Can;t say I'm too pleased about this:

"Senate Democrats appear willing to let Sen. Joe Lieberman keep his powerful Homeland Security Committee chairmanship, even though the Connecticut independent campaigned vigorously for John McCain's White House bid, two congressional sources told CNN Monday."

[Dr. Lumplevin]

The fact that Obama would associate with such a traitor is deeply troubling. Maybe he thinks that Lieberman is "rehabilitated," but Lieberman is clearly unrepentant, saying "I wish I did more."

Just appalling.

[Dr. Lumplevin]

The fact that Obama would associate with such a traitor is deeply troubling. Maybe he thinks that Lieberman is "rehabilitated," but Lieberman is clearly unrepentant, saying "I wish I did more."

Just appalling.