OPINION | There’s Respect for the Dead, But What Lieberman Got From ‘Morning Joe’ Was A Tongue Bath
Late senator's politics shouldn't have been swept aside, even in an appreciation
I don’t know many folks — even among those on the progressive left of American politics — who would choose to savage Joe Lieberman in the aftermath of the former senator’s death.
But Lieberman, who died Wednesday at age 82, freely took a variety of votes and political positions during his career that deserve thoughtful scrutiny and discussion, even in a respectful — even warm — appreciation of his life.
What the co-host of MSNBC’s popular program, Morning Joe, chose to lavish on Lieberman the morning after his death, however, could be fairly described as a sycophantic tongue-bath.
It’s not that Joe Scarborough, the former Republican congressman from Florida, repeatedly called Lieberman a “great man.”
Rather, Scarborough preemptively attacked anyone who would dare question Lieberman’s politics as “far left-wing progressives that will pick out a vote here or a vote there and just absolutely trash him even in death.”
Sorry, but there’s more to examine in Lieberman’s nearly quarter-century in national public life than “a vote here or a vote there.”
And describing it that way is disappointingly disingenuous.
Moreover, we can reflect critically on the totality of Lieberman’s years in the US Senate without having to “absolutely trash him.”
For someone whose election to the Senate relied on defeating a popular — and surprisingly liberal — incumbent in Lowell Weicker, and who at one point rose to become the Democratic nominee for vice president of the United States, Lieberman became awfully fond of trashing the Democratic Party. Just to use Scarborough’s turn of phrase.
That Lieberman strongly backed President George W Bush’s war in Iraq is a serious matter, especially since we know that Bush’s stated rationale for the war was built on nothing but falsehoods.
Then less than 10 years after his turn on the Democratic presidential ticket, Lieberman not only refused to support his party’s first Black nominee for president, he went the extra mile to kick the party which had repeatedly helped elect him by actually addressing the Republicans’ national convention that year instead.
Ultimately, of course, all this caught up with Lieberman and he lost his last Democratic primary and had to resort to running his last reelection as an independent.
Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski also had Connecticut’s Democratic governor, Ned Lamont, on their program.
Unlike Scarborough, Lamont showed us how to offer a kind-but-honest assessment of a prominent public official who has just passed away.
As the Democrat who beat Lieberman in that 2006 primary, maybe Lamont wasn’t in a position to do otherwise. But he was much more forthright about disagreements with Lieberman while also acknowledging the deceased as a nice man and offering the family heartfelt condolences.
I hope Scarborough — and anyone else interested in whitewashing any newly deceased public figure’s legacy in the name of “respect” — were taking notes.
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