Sense and sanctimony (Sidney Blumenthal on Lieberman)

[T_i_B]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1842036,00.html

Joe Lieberman's fall from grace appears straightforward. In Connecticut, where George Bush and his war are intensely disliked, Lieberman stationed himself as the president's defender. But Lieberman's precipitous descent from nomination as vice president to rejection by his home state partisans is also something of a mystery. Lieberman was once the most attractive and promising Democrat in his state, his grasp of political realities subtle and sinuous. But he became scornful of disagreement, parading himself as a moral paragon to whom voters should be privileged to pay deference. The elevation of his sanctimony was accompanied by the loss of his political sense.

When Lieberman ran his first primary campaign for the state senate in 1970, against an entrenched Democratic machine politician, he was an insurgent reformer, relying on an army of young idealistic volunteers. (One of them was Yale law student Bill Clinton.) Lieberman was a star liberal on the Yale campus, editor of the Yale Daily News, a civil rights worker in the south, an activist against the Vietnam war, and yet adept at getting out the vote. His senior honours thesis was a study of the Democratic state boss, John Bailey, who forged competing ethnic groups into a winning coalition. Lieberman's victory seemed to herald a new day in Connecticut.

In the rush to war in Iraq, Lieberman was in the forefront of cheerleading, and Bush took to citing him often. Entering the Congress to deliver his 2005 state of the union address, Bush famously kissed him godfather-style. In November of last year, after a Potemkin Village tour of Iraq, Lieberman wrote in the Wall Street Journal hailing "the coming victory" and a month later on the Senate floor rebuked "Democrats who distrust President Bush" for failing to acknowledge "we undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril". Believing that he had turned into a sacrosanct institution beyond reproach, the acolyte of John Bailey neglected political organisation. Disdainful of New England Democrats for daring to criticise the southern conservative president, Lieberman was stunned by the emergence of an intra-party opponent, Ned Lamont, a liberal patrician banker.

Lieberman finished his campaign on a desperate note, proclaiming his purity of heart as a Democrat and assailing Bush on Iraq blunders, even as he announced in losing that he would not abide by his party's verdict and instead run as an independent. The man of faith is now running on bad faith. Self-righteousness fostered self-delusion leading to self-destruction. Lieberman's fall is a cautionary tale not limited to Connecticut.

[movonne]

1. good article...

[Cha]

2. Good one, Mr Blumenthal!

joe disgraced himself and people took notice.