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Third and Hopefully Final Post on Lieberman

One of the best books I read this year was Lynne Olson’s “Troublesome Young Men,” about how a rebellion by members of Neville Chamberlain’s own Conservative Party in 1939-1940 forced him out of office and brought about the installation of Winston Churchill. With the benefit of hindsight, it seems obvious that Chamberlain’s policy of appeasing Hitler was not only cowardly and immoral but simply bad policy and he had to be replaced with a Prime Minister made of strong stuff, but for the members of Parliament who brought about his downfall–and the opposition parties weren’t strong enough to accomplish this without Chamberlain’s Conservatives putting country above politics–the decision was a wrenching, painful one. Everything they had been taught about team loyalty made them view this as a terrible betrayal. Though it was the right thing to do, it was for many of them an anguishing decision.

Lieberman makes these men look like quaint, naive little antiques.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 at 6:17 pm and is filed under The Political Mindscape. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “Third and Hopefully Final Post on Lieberman”

js5872 Says:
November 19th, 2008 at 4:26 am
I would like to know how much of the senate vote on Lieberman was influenced by Obama’s own position on the matter. Little secret has been made of the fact that Obama did not want to see Lieberman punished, at least not in any real sense of that term. In the early going anyway, I think I am inclined to agree with Sara’s commment in the first post on this topic. It does, at least on the surface, represent a move away from a more vindictive way of governing. And it does, at least on the surface, underscore Obama’s repeated emphasis on establishing unity. As with most things, I guess time will tell how consequential was the decision to not hold Lieberman accountable.
-js
Shaun P. Says:
November 19th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Unity is wonderful and I applaud President Obama for taking the high road and avoiding “revenge”.

I just hope it doesn’t come back to bite him in the rear, because to me, it seemed like he also rewarded incompetence.
jcs5872 Says:
November 19th, 2008 at 11:35 am
I hope so as well. No doubt, Obama’s forgiveness was entirely selfless. I am sure in the long term he sees Joe as useful to him on some front or other. But, as I said above time will tell.
-js
jcs5872 Says:
November 19th, 2008 at 11:36 am
With regards to the second sentence in my previous post I mean, of course, no doubt his forgiveness was not entirely selfless. I hate it when that happens. Good grief.
-js
Shaun P. Says:
November 19th, 2008 at 11:47 am
js, I actually read your post the way you meant it to read, and only realized that you had left out “not” when I got to your correction. So no worries here. =)
Paul M. Says:
November 20th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
The way to punish Lieberman is to do so by campaigning against him when he comes up for re-election, since his “crime” was campaigning against Obama.

Let’s see how he does until then. If he get’s out of line then bring all the power of the DNC down into Connecticut at that time.

I know this isn’t very satisfying but he can be useful on a lot of issues.

And let us remember their are a lot of conservative leaning Democrats in Congress and not everybody will be pulling the party line, so that one vote could be very helpful.

I do agree with the King Maker point that Steven makes, but it will also focus attention on Lieberman’s voting record for everyone (including his constituance) to see

Third and Hopefully Final Post on Lieberman

6 Responses to “Third and Hopefully Final Post on Lieberman”

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