NY Times: "Revenge of the Irate Moderates"
The NY Times' editorial page characterized Ned Lamont's victory over Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic primary as the "Revenge of the Irate Moderates" (apparently, "outraged" was already taken). The point of the editorial is that it is absurd to claim that Lamont's primary victory represents some kind of dramatic shift to the left - instead, the results show how far out of touch Lieberman has been with his own state. And they're one hundred percent right.
Lamont, a cable television executive whose great-grandfather was once chairman of J.P. Morgan & Company, has been criticized for running primarily on the Iraq issue. But that's how a representative democracy is supposed to work - at the end the day, the major issues of the day must come first. When it came to Iraq, Lieberman not only failed to admit that he had been wrong - which every single member of Congress should have admitted by now - but he even went as far as to suggest that critics of the President's foreign policy were hurting the country. In December 2005, Lieberman said:
"It is time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be Commander-in-Chief for three more critical years, and that in matters of war we undermine Presidential credibility at our nation's peril." [lieberman.senate.gov]
Lieberman's statement directly contradicts the Teddy Roosevelt quote I have had at the top of this blog for two years (a statement which, incidentally, Roosevelt made during World War I); like many of his neoconservative allies, Lieberman seems to genuinely believe that citizens are a pesky inconvenience, rather than the bedrock of a true democracy. As the New York Times editorial points out, Lieberman never stood up to the Bush administration's continual abuses of power:
The rebellion against Mr. Lieberman was actually an uprising by that rare phenomenon, irate moderates. They are the voters who have been unnerved over the last few years as the country has seemed to be galloping in a deeply unmoderate direction. A war that began at the president's choosing has degenerated into a desperate, bloody mess that has turned much of the world against the United States. The administration's contempt for international agreements, Congressional prerogatives and the authority of the courts has undermined the rule of law abroad and at home.
Yet while all this has been happening, the political discussion in Washington has become a captive of the Bush agenda. Traditional beliefs like every person's right to a day in court, or the conviction that America should not start wars it does not know how to win, wind up being portrayed as extreme. The middle becomes a place where senators struggle to get the president to volunteer to obey the law when the mood strikes him. Attempting to regain the real center becomes a radical alternative. [NY Times]
In those two concise paragraphs, the Times editorial makes the point I've been trying to make with this blog during the last two years. We should not define "liberal," "moderate," and "conservative" based on what cable news commentators and the two parties' strategists tell us. Instead, American politics should be discussed in the context of American history.
"Revenge of the Irate Moderates" [NY Times]
Lamont, a cable television executive whose great-grandfather was once chairman of J.P. Morgan & Company, has been criticized for running primarily on the Iraq issue. But that's how a representative democracy is supposed to work - at the end the day, the major issues of the day must come first. When it came to Iraq, Lieberman not only failed to admit that he had been wrong - which every single member of Congress should have admitted by now - but he even went as far as to suggest that critics of the President's foreign policy were hurting the country. In December 2005, Lieberman said:
"It is time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be Commander-in-Chief for three more critical years, and that in matters of war we undermine Presidential credibility at our nation's peril." [lieberman.senate.gov]
Lieberman's statement directly contradicts the Teddy Roosevelt quote I have had at the top of this blog for two years (a statement which, incidentally, Roosevelt made during World War I); like many of his neoconservative allies, Lieberman seems to genuinely believe that citizens are a pesky inconvenience, rather than the bedrock of a true democracy. As the New York Times editorial points out, Lieberman never stood up to the Bush administration's continual abuses of power:
The rebellion against Mr. Lieberman was actually an uprising by that rare phenomenon, irate moderates. They are the voters who have been unnerved over the last few years as the country has seemed to be galloping in a deeply unmoderate direction. A war that began at the president's choosing has degenerated into a desperate, bloody mess that has turned much of the world against the United States. The administration's contempt for international agreements, Congressional prerogatives and the authority of the courts has undermined the rule of law abroad and at home.
Yet while all this has been happening, the political discussion in Washington has become a captive of the Bush agenda. Traditional beliefs like every person's right to a day in court, or the conviction that America should not start wars it does not know how to win, wind up being portrayed as extreme. The middle becomes a place where senators struggle to get the president to volunteer to obey the law when the mood strikes him. Attempting to regain the real center becomes a radical alternative. [NY Times]
In those two concise paragraphs, the Times editorial makes the point I've been trying to make with this blog during the last two years. We should not define "liberal," "moderate," and "conservative" based on what cable news commentators and the two parties' strategists tell us. Instead, American politics should be discussed in the context of American history.
"Revenge of the Irate Moderates" [NY Times]
posted at 4:24:00 PM | permalink
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