The first, from several readers is that Sen. Lieberman has simply been a bad committee chairman -- he never held probing hearings into the President's homeland security doings, or its response to Katrina. (The counter to this might be that none of the other committees in the Senate want to yield their portfolios to the new Homeland Security committee, although Lieberman could have gotten hearings if he had wanted to.) Here's an argument from Prof. John Zaslow that is harder to rebut:
All of this might be forgiven if Lieberman had shown that he was an excellent committee chairman. But in fact, he has been a terrible one. This is partly because of his failure to investigate the serial incompetence of the administration on just about everything. Katrina was only one. And this didn't have to be partisan: incompetence is incompetence no matter who does it. Judge Richard Posner of the 7th Circuit--certainly no liberal--has in several opinions accused the immigration judges in ICE of being the most incompetent he had seen (as an example, see http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1208861007986) but there are lots of others). Wouldn't it have been nice to have had the Senate Homeland Security investigating these things and trying to fix them? You can also read Edward Alden's terrific new book, "The Closing of the American Border", which shows in quite painstaking detail the horrific problems that DHS has had in getting up to speed, establishing sound policies, or even understanding what the problem is/was. And where was Joe Lieberman in all of this? Nowhere.
This is far more than just political payback. It reflects a concern that, now that Democrats simply do not have the will to enforce the public mandate. I don't care about Lieberman personally; but I care an awful lot about the country. And I'm not sure that Senate Democrats do.
Reader David Loewenberg has been watching his WSOP:
One of the most important points about winning poker is counting your opponents' chips. Joe Lieberman is "small stacked" in chips and that's why Obama wants him at the table. How so? Because Obama will win those chips later on in the "game." Obama is a poker-player (and I'm sure that Lieberman is not). He knows "when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em." Trust me, he will call Lieberman's bluffing (actually, he'll have someone else call it) when it's time, when he needs the votes for important legislation, for example. And if Saint Joe starts to feel comfortable and begins to "bully the table" again, he'll get called and show his weak hand against, undoubtedly, Obama's winning hand. The President-elect hasn't missed a "read" yet; he knows he can play Lieberman for as long (or as short) as he wants to.
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