Obama and Lieberman: The Politics of Forgiveness

Rereading my blog post of last week about Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman’s future in the Democratic party, I’m now struck by how my assumptions in the piece were based on a Washington political paradigm that may no longer exist. Lieberman’s fate in the wake of his fervent support for defeated presidential candidate John McCain, as well as his negative attacks on Barack Obama, his own party’s candidate, has been much in discussion this week. I’m sure I wasn’t alone in thinking—assuming, I should say again—that Lieberman would be treated as a traitor by his fellow democrats; that he would be stripped of his committee chairmanships, sent to the furthest reaches of the back bench (if he was allowed to caucus with Democrats at all), denied support for any of his legislative efforts, made to wear a big red clown nose, and perhaps even be given a wedgie.

But many assumptions were shattered this week when word came down that what Barack Obama was going to order Senate Democrats to do with Lieberman was….. nothing. Nothing. From a Washington Post article today:

“In a phone conversation with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Obama said that expulsion of Lieberman for his support of the Republican presidential ticket would send the wrong signal after Obama’s promises to set partisanship aside, according to a Senate democratic aide familiar with the conversation.”

Well, sure Obama promised to set partisanship aside. But Lieberman at one point during the campaign, when asked if Obama is a Marxist, said, “Well, you know, I must say that’s a good question.”

I must say if I was running for president, and if someone in my own party said something like that about me, and then if I ended up winning by a mile…. well, vengeance would be mine. I mean, that’s how politics have been done in Washington for the last 16-years, right? You diss me when you’re in power, I’ll get you back when my turn comes. I’ll try and impeach your party’s president, you’ll paint a target on my back when the next election rolls around. You disagree with me, I’ll say you’re not a Real American. Etcetera, etcetera.

But Obama isn’t demanding Lieberman’s head on a platter. In fact, it seems like he’s taking the Lieberman situation not as a partisan dilemma, but as an opportunity: what better way to show that you really are “post-partisan” than to immediately let your wayward fellow party member back into the fold? It might work in a few other ways, also. There’s really no better way to disempower your “enemies” than by forgiving them, even if you’re just doing it tactically. Bitterness and anger have become the coins of the realm in our national politics. But forgiving and seeking compromise? This guy wasn’t kidding about change.

Not that Joe is going to get out of this unscathed. There is talk in the democratic caucus of taking away Lieberman’s chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee, and letting him chair a much lower-profile panel, to slap him with some kind of sanction. While Obama is playing the good cop here, he has still essentially left it up to Harry Reid and the Democratic leadership. And don’t count out the vocal progressive bloggers, who DO want Lieberman’s head. Jane Hamsher writes:

“One point I think needs to be made. This isn't about Joe Lieberman maintaining membership in a country club as a matter of feel-good "bipartisanship." There's actually a job that needs doing here, and when Chris Dodd and Evan Bayh say that they want Lieberman to retain his chairmanship, they are saying that the extraordinary waste, graft, greed and cronyism that have built the Department of Homeland Security to a bloated, ineffectual taxpayer-funded behemoth under Joe Lieberman is just fine.”

So does not holding a grudge against Lieberman make Obama look stronger, or weaker? Certainly the Lieberman matter has given Obama a chance to demonstrate the core message of his campaign less than a week after the election. But it’s also highlighted the intra-party squabbles likely to emerge as the President-Elect actually begins governing. It looks like a lot of old assumptions are going to be questioned in the months ahead.

***UPDATE: A few points worth clarifying on the “What about Joe?” issue: Saying Obama was going to “order” Senate Democrats to do anything is only a manner of speaking. His recommendation, it might be better to say, is that the leadership not expel Lieberman from the caucus.

Further, many commentators are focusing on the ambiguity of that recommendation. Although Obama is saying Dems should keep Lieberman in the fold, he isn’t saying anything about whether he should be punished by losing his committee chairmanship, or face some other sanction. There’s disagreement on the blogosphere about whether this will help or hurt Lieberman in his bid to stay in the caucus and keep his chairmanship.