Lame Duck or Fresh Fowl for GOP Table?

Dispossession must be good for the soul. In final Senate days, Joe Lieberman adioses the Three Amigos on the McCain-Graham call for a special committee to investigate Benghazi attacks, as do other GOP colleagues.

Meanwhile, McCain himself jumps for another spotlight by urging that the President send Bill Clinton to oversee cease fire talks between Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza.

What’s really going on here? Between closing the books on Obama I and starting the overture for II, the Republican orchestra is tuning up, with future soloists piping new sounds and past performers trying to horn in for one last chorus.

As McCain and his ilk recede, the 2016 hopefuls try out their arias. Paul Ryan hopes to survive Romney discord by vocalizing in the debt ceiling talks. “He helps us toward creating a product,” says Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, who didn’t help the ticket carry his home state, “and he helps sell the product.”

Chris Christie, who embraced Obama for the Sandy cleanup, tries out his new act on Saturday Night Live,  and Bobby Jindal leads the chorus for a new likable GOP.  In an interview, Marco Rubio waffles about the age of the earth.

While Barack Obama is out of the country being President, the Sunday morning talkers are still trying to get over their Romney flop.

“You have a political problem,” says George Will, “when the voters don’t like you, but you’ve got a real problem when the voters think you don’t like them.”

Republicans won’t have a Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving this year, but they’re trying.

Update: In a holiday eve news dump, McCain admits he was wrong about Susan Rice and Benghazi.  Quietly eating crow the night before Thanksgiving is not likely to spoil his appetite for red meat the day after tomorrow.

Republican Rover Boys Return

Mitt Romney comes back as a sore loser as GOP governors call for a new tone in Washington, but two very old voices are back with a vengeance.

John McCain and Lindsey Graham, the Senate’s odd couple, reprise ancient roles in a blatant attempt to sidetrack Susan Rice’s nomination as Secretary of State and, in the process, enrage Barack Obama as well as remind long-time observers what political piss-ants they have both become.

“If Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me,” the President fumes. “For them to go after the U.N. ambassador, who had nothing to do with Benghazi and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received, and to besmirch her reputation is outrageous.”

Outrageous is the right word for the two as they are chaperoned by New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who has replaced Joe Lieberman in their three-amigos act, to savage Ambassador Rice.

McCain’s fall from favor as the outspoken maverick is by now a familiar story, but a new generation may be hazy about exactly who Graham is.

Jumpstarting his career in the 1990s on the House Judiciary Committee by insisting the Republic would fall because Bill Clinton unzipped in the Oval Office, Graham moved on to the Senate as a supporter of the Iraq war, a frequent flier there with McCain and an omnipresence in his 2008 presidential campaign.

When McCain chose a running mate, he considered Lieberman and finally settled on Sarah Palin but gave no consideration to Graham, whose reputation as a Southern conservative might have broadened the ticket's appeal.

One nasty explanation surfaced then with the pronouncement of a hardline opponent that Graham was a closeted gay: "Sen. Graham, you need to come forward and tell people about your alternative lifestyle and your homosexuality.”

Distasteful as it may be to dredge up such speculation, it is part and parcel of the history of the ugly politics of personal destruction that McCain and Graham are now using against Susan Rice.

McCain passed up Graham as a running mate in 2008 to pick Game Changer Sarah Palin. 

Teaming up to harass Obama again is no more attractive than it was then and deserves no better result now.

Clinton Divides Democrats Again

“I don’t belong to any organized party,” said the 1930s cowboy sage Will Rogers, “I’m a Democrat.”

Now Bill Clinton is back to help Barack Obama’s reelection and remind us of his genius for monkey-wrenching his own party (see Lewinsky, Monica/Lieberman, Joe et al in 1998).

On the one hand, the Comeback Kid is in Wisconsin to support the recall of caveman Gov. Scott Walker but, on the other, he’s dropping a small bomb on the Obama campaign by praising Mitt Romney’s business record:   

“I don’t think that we ought to get into the position where we say ‘This is bad work. This is good work.’ The man who has been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold.”

Of course, the former President soon walks back the praise, but not before being thanked  by Romney and reminding Obama’s Chicago campaign mafia of an old expression, “If you have Bill Clinton for a friend, you don’t need an enemy.

There are echoes here of the 2008 primary fight, in which Hillary’s husband embarrassingly assumed the role of partisan hack in trashing his wife’s opponent before finally getting on board the Obama bandwagon.

Whether or not Romney’s Bain record is a campaign issue is for the President’s handlers to decide but without public prodding from his Party’s Grey Eminence, who depends on Wall Street financial support for so many of his other current efforts to improve the world.

If Will Rogers were still with us, he wouldn’t be surprised at far we’ve gone beyond his dictum, "Everything is changing. People are taking the comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke."

The joke is on us all.

Departures of Two Public Men

Robert Sargent Shriver, a Kennedy by marriage and in spirit, died this week at the age of 95 just as Joseph Lieberman, 68 announces he is leaving the Senate next year, offering a contrast in public figures.

Shriver, brother-in-law of JFK and Robert, the first director of the Peace Corps who later led LBJ's "war on poverty," was a modest man. Lieberman, who claims to have been inspired to run for public office by President Kennedy, is not.

As Gail Collins puts it, "Normally people look particularly appealing when they’re promising to go away. This time, not so much.

“'I can’t help but also think about my four grandparents and the journey they traveled more than a century ago,' he said in his speech. 'Even they could not have dreamed that their grandson would end up a United States senator and, incidentally, a barrier-breaking candidate for vice president.'”

On the same New York Times editorial page, Bono writes an appreciation of Shriver, who also led the Special Olympics for the mentally disabled, "Bobby Shriver--Sarge’s oldest son--and I co-founded three fighting units in the war against global poverty...We may not yet know what it will take to finish the fight and silence suffering in our time, but we are flat out trying to live up to Sarge’s drill."

My friend Michael Harrington, whose book "The Other America" inspired the war on poverty, once described Shriver's spirit. After a deep breath outdoors and saying, "Great day to be on the slopes, eh Mike?" they went indoors to work in an office until dark.

Lest anyone defend Lieberman from this comparison on the grounds that he did not come from great wealth, Collins says of Lieberman who helped torpedo the public option in health care as "The Senator from Aetna":

"(P)eople with principles have to take an independent stand. But Lieberman’s career has taught us how important it is to do that with a sense of humility. If you’re continually admiring yourself as you walk away from your group, eventually people are going to feel an irresistible desire to trip you."

Joan Didion summed him up when he was running for vice-president as a Democrat before backing McCain and addressing the Republican convention eight years later:

"Senator Lieberman, who had come to the nation's attention as the hedge player who had previously seized center stage by managing both to denounce the president [Bill Clinton] for 'disgraceful' and 'immoral' behavior and to vote against his conviction (similarly, he had in 1991 both voiced support for and voted against the confirmation of Clarence Thomas) was not, except to the press, an immediately engaging personality...

"His speech patterns, grounded in the burdens he bore for the rest of us and the personal rewards he had received from God for bearing it, tended to self-congratulation."

They still do.

Update: Lieberman is defended by David Brooks as "A Most Valuable Democrat" in an overly generous tribute to his moderation and independence but, with the way things are going, by 2012 his opportunism may be cause for nostalgia.

Connecticut Sends in the Clowns

Up to now, there was only Joe Lieberman doing his Uriah Heep act for cable news cameras, but now the Nutmeg State has its own tent for November's national circus to rival such freak-show attractions as the Kentucky ophthalmologist with tunnel vision and flashbacks to an imaginary past.

The Democratic front-runner suddenly morphs from a buttoned-down bureaucrat to the character in "Arsenic and Old Lace," waving a wooden sword up the stairs yelling "Charge!" as Republicans counter with a woman whose yacht is named Sexy Bitch and whose political resume makes Sarah Palin look like Robert Byrd.

Linda McMahon, according to Gail Collins, "made a mint off the formerly seedy, small-town entertainment known as professional wrestling by adding heavy doses of sex, more spectacular violence and a raw tone that bordered on pornography. Linda McMahon now likes to brag that she’s 'created a product that is one of America’s greatest exports,' as if there’s no question that bringing half-naked women wrestling in pudding to 145 countries was one of America’s greater accomplishments."

Ms. McMahon's political career consists of a year's appointment to the State Board of Education, followed by a promise to spend $50 million of her own money to win the Senate seat, which was enough to defeat former Rep. Rob Simmons at the Republican convention last week as her campaign went on steroids by promoting Richard Blumenthal's "misstatements" about serving in Vietnam.

The GOP candidate's former enterprise, World Wrestling Entertainment, has tried to clean up its act by forbidding wrestlers to cut their foreheads with razor blades in the ring, a possible sign that her campaign will not feature as much blood and gore in its negative ads as might be expected.

But the contest to find a suitable Senate clown to pair with Joe Lieberman is sure to be no tea party. The Democrat's war record may be as staged as the Republican's wrestling matches, but both are going to get a taste of real combat now.

Lindsey Graham Crackers

The most perplexing GOP politician is at it again, this time upending a "bipartisan" energy bill in a fit over Senate Democrats' decision to take up immigration reform in the face of a harsh new law just passed in Arizona, the home state of his best friend, John McCain, who is fighting for reelection there.

Lindsey Graham's decision, which derails planned introduction tomorrow of a climate change bill, cosponsored by John Kerry and Joe Lieberman, is only the latest move in almost two decades of zigzags that can't be explained by ideology alone.

Jumpstarting his career on the House Judiciary Committee by insisting the Republic would fall because Bill Clinton unzipped in the Oval Office, Graham moved on to the Senate as a solid supporter of the Iraq war, a frequent flier there with McCain and an omnipresence in his 2008 presidential campaign.

Along the way, he took flak back home in South Carolina for joining McCain and Ted Kennedy in supporting serious immigration reform and, as recently as this January, was censured by hard-right Republicans there for positions on that issue as well as energy and the bank bailout.

When McCain was choosing a running mate, it was surprising that he considered Lieberman and finally settled on Sarah Palin but seemingly gave no consideration to Graham, whose reputation nationally as a Southern conservative might have broadened the ticket's appeal.

A possible explanation surfaces now with the public pronouncement of an immigration hardliner that Graham is a closeted gay: "Sen. Graham, you need to come forward and tell people about your alternative lifestyle and your homosexuality...I don't care about your private life, Lindsey. But as our U.S. senator I need to figure out why you're trying to sell out your own countrymen, and I need to make sure your being gay isn't it."

If the current political climate were to get any uglier, bludgeoning Graham with rumors about his sexuality this way would be another step down toward the pure politics of personal destruction.

Under this kind of pressure, the Senator's sense of being embattled on all sides is more understandable--and deplorable.

In the light of Graham's situation, Thomas Friedman's proposal today that the Tea Party go green is pure fantasy. The worst elements of the anti-incumbent movement are heading toward blood red.

Seducing Scott Brown

The Republicans' new Great White Hope could turn out to be a disappointment for the Right wing of the GOP--and an opportunity for Democrats.

"I know what I want to do: Go down there and be a good person, a good and competent senator," Scott Brown tells Peggy Noonan. "I have huge shoes to fill, the legacy is just overwhelming. I'm a consensus builder...I can disagree in the daytime and have a coffee or beer later on. Everyone's welcome to their opinion."

This will come as a shock to Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Eric Cantor, whose beverage of choice is Tea, the more bitter the better, and it leaves an opening for the Obama White House and Senate Democrats to reach across and welcome Brown into what used to be the bipartisan atmosphere of that body.

For Brown, such a development should not require much seduction, since it offers him an opening to be a Republican not-Palin rather than just one more among 41 blocks of granite in the Upper House.

In addition, it makes sense for his long-range future since Massachusetts may only temporarily have turned red with rage and might be more likely to reward him in the future for moderation.

As someone who regards Roe v Wade as "settled law" and approves the President's policies for Afghanistan and Korea, Brown as another New England Republican could give cover to Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins in their tendencies toward creating some semblance of what used to be civility and reason from a loyal opposition.

All of this may turn out to be wishful thinking, but unlike the fellow members of the club he will be joining, Brown is no financial fat cat, and he will be arriving after President Obama's call of congratulations and refusal to try to ram through health reform before he was seated.

If John Kerry and other Democrats dust off their collegiality skills, they may find Scott Brown easier to take than Joe Lieberman--and very likely a lot less shifty.

Defective Decade, Take Two

In the past ten years, to hold the second most powerful position in the nation, Americans cast more than a quarter of a billion ballots for such leaders with outstanding qualities as (in alphabetical order) Dick Cheney, John Edwards, Joe Lieberman and Sarah Palin.

This could not have been what a twentieth-century Vice President of the United States, John Nance Garner, had in mind when he declared that the position was "not worth a bucket of warm piss."

Obama and the Benator

As Democrats worked feverishly to stuff Sen. Ben Nelson into his Christmas stocking, the President used his pre-holiday weekly address to hammer health insurer lobbyists and promise voters "the toughest measures we’ve ever taken to hold the insurance industry accountable."

The price for a Nelson this season was high, starting with possible restrictions by the states on abortion coverage and filling the package to the brim with what are delicately described as "other favors for his home state." The man George W. Bush called "the Benator" showed once again why he had rejected "Nellie" as too soft a nickname for his hard-to-buy centrist self.

On cue, the heavens dropped a blanket of snow on DC to cover the legislative wreckage in time for a possible Christmas Eve postcard of bringing health reform home for the holidays.

The final bill, the President promises, will have protections as "just one part of a landmark reform that will finally reduce the cost of health care...

"The insurance industry knows all this. That’s why they’re at it again, using their muscle in Washington to try to block a vote they know they will lose. They’re lobbying. They’re running ads. They’re spending millions of dollars to kill health insurance reform, just like they’ve done so many times before. They want to preserve a system that works better for the insurance industry than it does for the American people."

With all due respect to a President who started out proposing serious reform and for too long watched it being torn apart by Congressional hacks, after the passage of this bill, the system will still work better for the health insurance industry--and the greediest of providers--than it does for the American people.

But consider the holiday toast from Paul Krugman: "By all means, hang Senator Joe Lieberman in effigy. Declare that you’re disappointed in and/or disgusted with President Obama. Demand a change in Senate rules that, combined with the Republican strategy of total obstructionism, are in the process of making America ungovernable. But meanwhile, pass the health care bill."

With an oh-so-heavy heart, have a sip of the egg nog (hoping like hell it has no Kool-Aid in it) and second the motion.

Insult to Injury Over Health Care

A touch of farce is just what the Senate scrimmage needed, and Joe Lieberman, bless his hypocritical heart, provided it at yesterday's White House meeting.

While the President tried to get his dyslexic troops marching in the same direction for a final vote, the Senator from Self-Important Sanctimony made a bid for sympathy from the assembled colleagues he has been holding hostage.

“What’s happening," he said, "is not any fun for me.”

Like the parent killer pleading for mercy as an orphan, Lieberman is now so deep in the two-faced logic that has marked his career he has lost all sight of cause and effect.

Long-time Lieberman watchers will recall his performances in the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings when he announced his support and voted no, followed by the Bill Clinton impeachment at which, after denouncing his party's President for "disgraceful" and "immoral" behavior," he cast his ballot for acquittal.

His current 180 on allowing those from 55 to 65 to enroll in Medicare is just the latest flip-flop, which critics attribute to his financial support from health insurers but can just as easily be seen as the result of his pathological need for the spotlight.

If Joe Lieberman is not enjoying having the White House Press Secretary describe as the object of the President's concern "members of the democratic caucus, including independents who caucus with the Democrats," such attentions must be as repellent to him as George W. Bush's State of the Union smooch and the coverage he drew on the campaign trail last year supporting John McCain.

When Lieberman complained yesterday about the pleasure deficit in his life, Sen. Sherrod Brown, who has championed the public option, answered, “You know, Joe, it’s not fun for us either” and the President reportedly joined in to say, “Why don’t we all begin to have some fun?” he said. “Let’s pass the bill.”

Not until Joe Lieberman has squeezed the last bit of TV face time out of the impasse.

Send In the Health-Care Clowns

As the public option starts to morph into an expansion of Medicare and Medicaid in the main tent, two Senate buffoons, Harry Reid and Joe Lieberman, are stepping up their side shows in the health care circus.

The Majority Leader is dragging slavery and woman's suffrage into the debate by invoking them as precedents for Republican resistance:

"When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said 'slow down, it's too early, things aren't bad enough'...When women spoke up for the right to vote, some insisted they simply, slow down, there will be a better day to do that, today isn't quite right."

In another corner of the freak show section, Joe Lieberman's antics are drawing so much attention that TV ads for an opponent of Connecticut's other senator, Chris Dodd, are taking shots at him: "Joe never forgets who he ran to represent: Himself. It's not about you. It's all about Joe."

Hundreds of protesters from an interfaith organization, reports the Washington Post, "showed up at Lieberman's home in Stamford and at his office in Hartford, to plead (and pray) for him to support the bill. Among them was Rabbi Ron Fish, of Congregation Beth El in Norwalk, Conn., who was so supportive of Lieberman's 2006 reelection bid that he rushed through John F. Kennedy International Airport in search of a mailbox in which to send his absentee ballot before boarding a flight to Israel."

Meanwhile, behind the vaudeville, some liberals are pushing to lower Medicare eligibility to age 55, expand Medicaid to cover those with incomes up to 150 percent of the poverty level (up to $33,075 for a family of four) and/or effectively cap insurance company profits by requiring them to spend 90 percent of premiums on clinical services and activities that improve the quality of care.

None of these proposals can compete with Reid and Lieberman for amusement value, but they indicate that some serious negotiating is going on.

Trade Health Care for More Stimulus?

The weekend "victory" in the Senate has Pyrrhic written all over it as 2000 pages of proposed legislation is on its way to being held hostage by the likes of Joe Lieberman, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson et al. What we have now is an abortion of a bill that will only get worse as the back-alley bargaining goes on.

Here's a radical idea for the President of Change: Take most of it off the table until after next year's elections and put your full weight behind another stimulus that would speed up economic recovery, create jobs and shove it down the throats of Republicans who are using the incoherence of health care reform to confuse Americans who are terrified about the economy.

"Most economists I talk to," Paul Krugman writes today, "believe that the big risk to recovery comes from the inadequacy of government efforts: the stimulus was too small, and it will fade out next year, while high unemployment is undermining both consumer and business confidence.

"Now, it’s politically difficult for the Obama administration to enact a full-scale second stimulus. Still, he should be trying to push through as much aid to the economy as possible. And remember, Mr. Obama has the bully pulpit; it’s his job to persuade America to do what needs to be done."

It would take political guts for the President, after all his talk about the urgency of health care reform, to take most of it off the table temporarily and put the effort and money into turning the economy around.

Settle for passing the noncontroversial elements now--i.e., no cutoffs for preexisting conditions--and move on to a full-scale assault on what is really worrying Americans.

Democrats who have to face the voters in less than a year should be able to unite and help him get something meaningful done.

Update: Joe Lieberman, dubbed by Joe Klein, "the Senator from Aetna," is digging in on the public option, in what the Wall Street Journal calls his "trademark sonorous baritone" but others would call a weasely whine, promising to filibuster against the public option. Harry Reid may buy him off before the final vote, but it's saddening to see a pivotal role being played by someone rejected by his own party's voters in the last election. Is this the way to get health care reform?

Lodestar Lieberman

In moments of crisis, Gail Collins wrote in the New York Times yesterday, "I generally recommend looking to see where Joe Lieberman is going. Then head the other way."

Such wrong-way reliability, which has made Lieberman a lodestar for the anxious and confused, delivers two gems today--on the Ft. Hood massacre and health care reform.

As investigators conclude that the shooting spree "was not part of a terrorist plot," he announces that, as Senate Homeland Security chairman, he plans to launch a probe into the motives behind "the worst terrorist attack since 9/11."

In a twofer on Fox News, the Independent Senator from Rupert Murdoch also renews his pledge to launch a filibuster against the public option in health care "put forward, I’m convinced, by people who really want the government to take over all of health insurance."

That would never do for a statesman whose base includes the nation's largest insurance companies, which contribute to his campaigns and employ his constituents.

In moments of uncertainty, I turn back to Joan Didion's assessment in 2004:

"Senator Lieberman, who had come to the nation's attention as the hedge player who had previously seized center stage by managing both to denounce the president [Bill Clinton] for 'disgraceful' and 'immoral' behavior and to vote against his conviction (similarly, he had in 1991 both voiced support for and voted against the confirmation of Clarence Thomas) was not, except to the press, an immediately engaging personality...

"His speech patterns, grounded in the burdens he bore for the rest of us and the personal rewards he had received from God for bearing it, tended to self-congratulation."

But such comfort comes at a price. As convinced as I am by Al Gore's warnings about global warming, it gives me pause to remember that, in Gore's judgment nine years ago, Joe Lieberman was the best person in the country to be a heartbeat away from the Oval Office.

Update: After a meeting with Israel's prime minister this week, President Obama is reported to have quipped to the delegations, "So, we’ve decided that we are going to trade our Lieberman for their Lieberman," referring to the Senator and the hard-line Israeli foreign minister. Sold.

Health Care as a Pyrrhic Victory

There is a rueful note in today's New York Times report of impending White House triumph in "a process that has at times seemed on the brink of anarchy":

"After months of plodding work by five Congressional committees and weeks of back-room bargaining by Democratic leaders, President Obama’s arms-length strategy on health care appears to be paying dividends, with the House and the Senate poised to take up legislation to insure nearly all Americans."

One criticism of all this chaos can be easily dismissed--that, as Matthew Yglesias shows, "Obama needs to be nicer to Republicans." Lack of bipartisanship on health care is like accusing the President of refusing to play tennis when nobody is on the other side of the net.

More important is the reality of Democratic Sen. Benjamin Cardin's observation, “When you are seeking 60 votes, every person is a kingmaker."

For only one example out of many, there is loathsome Joe Lieberman who, after being allowed to keep his committee chairmanship despite campaigning for McCain last year, is threatening to filibuster against any public option in totally predictable loyalty to the insurance companies that dominate his state rather than the President who forgave his own disloyalty.

Meanwhile, as the Wall Street Journal rails against "The Worst Bill Ever" ("Epic new spending and taxes, pricier insurance, rationed care, dishonest accounting: The Pelosi health bill has it all"), it's hard to refute those epic distortions about the many thousands of dense pages that are working their way through both houses of Congress.

These coming weeks will be a test for the Obama "arm's-length strategy," his instinct for consensus rather than strong leadership from the top.

According to one of his favorite philosophers, Reinhold Niebuhr, "Moral reason must learn how to make coercion its ally without running the risk of a Pyrrhic victory in which the ally exploits and negates the triumph."

But on the other hand, the mid-20th century's most eminent Protestant theologian never had to contemplate the arm-twisting that passes for reasoning with both allies and foes on Capitol Hill.

As in the debate over Afghanistan, the President is going to have to step up with decisiveness and persuade all the competing interests to follow his leadership.

Media Wake, Biden Tears

The etiquette of celebrity death brings the usual talking heads--calculating Orrin Hatch on PBS, loathsome Joe Lieberman on Larry King--with me-me-me tributes to Ted Kennedy but largely unseen is Joe Biden with an authentic outpouring of human grief.

In an era when empathy is an accusation, the Vice President is an anachronism--a politician often demeaned right and left for speaking his mind and heart, exposing himself to political ridicule.

Yesterday morning, in a routine appearance at the Department of Energy, Biden could not suppress tears along with memories of a friendship that endured for decades:

"He stood with me when my wife and daughter were killed in an accident. He was on the phone with me literally every day in the hospital, my two children were attempting, and, God willing, thankfully survived very serious injuries. I'd turn around and there would be some specialist from Massachusetts, a doc I never even asked for, literally sitting in the room with me."

Biden was 29 when he came to the Senate, Kennedy had been 30. "He and I were talking after his diagnosis," the Vice President recalled. "And I said, I think you're the only other person I've met who...is more optimistic, more enthusiastic, more idealistic, sees greater possibilities after 36 years."

Although Kennedy improved the lives of millions, Biden recalled, he "never was petty. He was never small. And in the process...he made everybody he worked with bigger--both his adversaries as well as his allies.

"Don't you find it remarkable that one of the most partisan, liberal men in the last century serving in the Senate had so many of his foes embracing him, because they know he made them bigger, he made them more graceful by the way in which he conducted himself?"

In many ways, Ted Kennedy will be irreplaceable, but Joe Biden remains as an exemplar of truth-telling and passionate idealism.

Health Care Horse Trading

In President Obama's house call on the AMA today, the medicine may be coated with a little sugar for doctors that will be a bitter pill for lawyers, setting limits on malpractice suits.

Such horse trading is par for the course in politics, but when the legislation gets into the final stretch, bedside manner won't be able to sooth away the critical issue--a public plan to keep private insurers honest.

Today's Wall Street Journal plays Paul Revere, sounding the alarm that "The 'Public Plan' Would Be the Only Plan," arguing that "It's impossible for private insurers to 'compete' with government." Such despair over free markets is unusual for the Journal and will certainly come as news to FedEx and e-mail providers who never should have challenged the federal postal system.

The air will be filled this week with similar pitches for sticking with old-time elixirs and, for the first time in quite a while, voters have a chance to lean on their Congressional barkers with messages through all channels about their wishes.

One of my own, Joe Lieberman, asserts there is "a real opportunity to do this year what we've been trying to do for years...reform American health care. I think the one thing that will stop that is pressure on the so-called public option. Let's get something done instead of having a debate."

I'll be sending back Dr. Lieberman's snake oil prescription with one of my own, hoping that millions of others, including the Physician-in-Chief, will do the same for Washington's political quacks.

Reckoning for Rove?

In his last White House days, George W. Bush left him a get-out-of-jail pass, but Karl Rove is still in the sights of the House Judiciary Committee over his role in the firing of the US attorneys.

Chairman John Conyers has issued a subpoena to Rove to appear for a deposition on February 2nd, saying, "Change has come to Washington, and I hope Karl Rove is ready for it."

Previously, citing a letter from the Bush Justice Department, Rove's lawyer claimed he is "constitutionally immune from compelled congressional testimony" but was willing to grant an "informal interview" or answer written questions about the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, whose ouster Rove is accused of arranging.

Now his lawyer is saying Rove received a renewed privilege assertion from Bush before he left office but that he will consult with Obama's White House counsel about the new Administration's views on the subject.

It will be a test for the new president's future-oriented tolerance (see Lieberman, Joe), but Karl Rove has become a symbol for eight years of lawlessness in seeking political advantage at all costs.

Even the least blood-thirsty of observers will sympathize with Conyers' assertion, "After two years of stonewalling, it's time for him to talk."

Gates-Keeping

With the imminent naming of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, the retention of Robert Gates at Defense will raise questions about exactly what Barack Obama means by "change."

One thing is clear: The new president does not equate change with personal revenge (Joe Lieberman's survival even more than Clinton's appointment proves that) or even, as with Gates, new faces.

Idealistic as he may be, Obama is also a pragmatist and keeping Gates is a practical solution during the necessary emphasis on the economy in the early days of the new administration.

Next week, Obama will be naming the rest of his foreign-policy team, which will reorient our Middle East policy away from Iraq toward the dangers posed by Afghanistan and Pakistan. In his two years at Defense, Gates has clearly been as realistic as could be expected, while serving Bush, on that subject.

Moreover, as soon as he replaced Rumsfeld, he saved American lives by giving priority to mine-resistant, ambush-protected trucks (MRAPs) that had been stalled for two years by Pentagon bureaucrats and, in succeeding months, aligned himself with Condoleeza Rice in blunting the push of Cheney's Neo-Cons for attacking Iran.

"Off with their heads" ideologues won't be satisfied by the arguments for retaining Gates, but he will be a reassuring figure as Obama goes about saving the economy and getting us out of Iraq.

Triumph of the Turncoat Houdini

Today's escape from losing his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee caps Joe Lieberman's career of having it both ways in two decades of sanctimonious posturing and backroom politicking.

With a novelist's eye for the absurd, Joan Didion nailed him in her reporting of the 2000 election campaign:

"Senator Lieberman, who had come to the nation's attention as the hedge player who had previously seized center stage by managing both to denounce the president [Bill Clinton] for "disgraceful" and "immoral" behavior and to vote against his conviction (similarly, he had in 1991 both voiced support for and voted against the confirmation of Clarence Thomas) was not, except to the press, an immediately engaging personality...

"His speech patterns, grounded in the burdens he bore for the rest of us and the personal rewards he had received from God for bearing it, tended to self-congratulation."

Lieberman called today's verdict “fair and forward-looking” and one of “reconciliation and not retribution,” but others, like this constituent, will see it as another slithering out of responsibility for his actions by the weasel who was voted out by his party in the 2006 primaries but kept his seat when Republicans named a non-entity to throw the three-way race his way.

The President-Elect and Senate Democrats may congratulate themselves on today's act of anonymous generosity, but Connecticut residents who are enraged by and stuck with Lieberman's smug, self-righteous, self-serving wrong-headedness won't join in the celebration.

Lieberman Limbo Dance

In his two-step with the former Democrat turned Independent (by his own party's outraged voters) and, most recently, inseparable McCain sidekick and Obama basher, Harry Reid is showing all the resolution and skill that have marked his tenure as Senate Majority Leader.

"Joe Lieberman is not some right-wing nutcase," Reid said today. "Joe Lieberman is one of the most progressive people ever to come from the state of Connecticut."

He is also playing Reid like a cheap violin in the moves over stripping him of chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee, as Democrats in and out of the Senate have been calling for the Majority Leader to do.

Apparently Lieberman is refusing to accept a less critical assignment and making eyes at Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in a threat to switch allegiances once again.

Reid, who used to be a boxer, seems unable to recognize a feint when he sees one and call the bluff. Back here in Connecticut, voters have revised an old folk saying, "When you have Joe Lieberman for a friend, you don't need an enemy."