Join the Lieberman Club (leave convictions at the door)
I belong to a very small and mostly unhappy secret society, the Joe Lieberman Club. Also known as Skull and Moans, a reference to his speaking voice, a flat, conviction-less sound that appears to be piped through his body from a studio on one of Saturn’s moons.
Joe Lieberman will never go away. Even now that he has technically gone away, he is not away. He is here. If I raise my eyes to the window, I will see him standing at the end of my driveway, preparing to enlist me in what appears to be a compromise but is more accurately a vacating of principles.
The president of Skull and Moans is Gail Collins of The New York Times who, in 2011, announced she was writing a book titled “Everything Bad Is Joe Lieberman’s Fault.” She has never finished this book. It is, by definition, impossible to finish, because Joe Lieberman will never stop breaking things.
It’s the sort of punishment the Greeks imagined taking place in Tartarus. Just as Gail finishes the last chapter of her book, Lieberman lets slip from his clammy hands one more fragile bauble relating to health care or foreign policy and it smashes on the parquet.
His contribution this week is to endorse incumbent U.S. Sen. Susan Collins (no relation to Gail) of Maine. This is fitting, because she kind of is Joe Lieberman. She has become Joe Lieberman.
Last February, explaining why she did not vote for the impeachment of Donald Trump she said, “I believe that the president has learned from this case,” and “I believe he will be much more cautious in the future.”
Even at the time, that seemed optimistic, as if this were Boys Town and Collins were Father Flanagan.
“You’re not a bad boy, Donnie, and with the proper guidance and God’s love, you’ll stop shaking down foreign leaders to help you win elections.”
What made it Liebermish — a word I have just invented — was its soft, floppy, Portuguese man-owar manner of drifting away from the matter at hand. Did Trump engage in these acts? Were these acts impeachable? Not the question, apparently.
And, of course, Trump “learning” to be more “cautious” is like Richard Crafts learning to find a quieter woodchipper. It’s not really the point or even desirable.
Three days after Collins absolved Trump, he had moved on to telling Bob Woodward that COVID-19 was more deadly, at least five times more deadly, than the flu and from there to telling the public that COVID-19 was no more to be feared than the flu.
What does it mean to be Liebermish? You must pretend to be a person of great principle when, in fact, you are simply difficult to pin down. For example, you appear, during the debate, to support the nomination of Clarence Thomas, even to the point of attacking your fellow Democrats who dare criticize him. Then you vote against Thomas, when you have counted noses and know he won’t be beaten.
You claim to be a man of peace when you would gladly arm the Quakers to fight the Amish or viceversa. You claim to be
Democrat and then, in 2008, volunteer to undertake some of the scummier, low-road attacks on candidate Obama. Is he a Marxist, Lieberman was asked? “I must say, that’s a good question.”
Endorsing Collins, Lieberman emphasized that he is “a lifelong Democrat” despite having literally made out with President George W. Bush at a State of the Union address. Bill Clinton is technically a lifelong Baptist, but that doesn’t mean he acts like one.
Lieberman is a lifelong Democrat because in 2006, having lost the primary to
Ned Lamont, he formed a third party called Connecticut for Lieberman
and didn’t join it. That’s so
Liebermish.
Whether it’s the Affordable Care Act or Brett Kavanaugh, Collins has learned the Lieberman lesson: play both ends against the middle and people will call it bipartisan; be the last one to declare your position and people will mistake it for thoughtfulness.
When you become more famous for waterbugging around than for taking a stand, people may even forgive you for the Iraq war or failing to Romney up.
Either that or people start to see through you — an easy feat when your convictions are paperthin. You are re-understood as a creature of vanity and opportunism. You lose.
This may be the fate of Collins. An endorsement from Lieberman should have no impact at all, other than to remind us he exists.
And hey, whatever happened to that Lamont fellow?