Senator Lieberman was forgiven? Good.
And why, exactly, is this good and why is it good for us? I'm glad you asked.
First of all, there has been enough pointless political assassination going on in the last eight years. For the Bush administration, this was the Modus Operandi. You must be ideologically proper or you're out.
When Jack Goldsmith met with David Addington, Alberto Gonzales and David Leitch regarding his replacing Jay Bybee as Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel, the first question asked was not regarding his qualifications, but why he had contributed eight hundred dollars to the campaign of his close friend Henry Pettit, who was running as a Democrat for a seat in the House of Representatives.
When our forefathers put together the documents that founded this country, they did not have ideological purity in mind as one of the aims that we were to shoot for. The idea was to put together a coalition of people who would govern themselves and who, on the road to that governance, would have the ability to discuss, debate and dissent from any point of view that they wanted to.
If Joe Lieberman decided that he did not see things exactly the way that Barack Obama did, then bully for him. If we punish him for that then we are stating that we are also interested in keeping the party pure.
The problem is that whether it is Republicans or Democrats keeping the party pure, the end result is the same- an ideological vacuum where ideas do not flourish and facts become burdensome.
On October 18, 2006, President Clinton gave a speech on 'Securing The Common Good' at Georgetown University. In it, he stated the following-
"The problem with ideology is, if you’ve got an ideology, you’ve already got your mind made up. You know all the answers, and that makes evidence irrelevant and argument a waste of time, so you tend to govern by assertion and attack."
Is this what we want?
In Senator Obama's election, we have been given a rare opportunity to touch something that is larger than ourselves. We have been priviledged to see our founding documents in action, to see the core values that built this country reaffirmed in a way that has and will continue to change this country forever. Before he was elected, we were one thing. Now, we are entirely something different.
The world sees this and honors it, as we read in this essay by William J. Kole who found out that after Obama was elected, it was suddenly cool to be American again.
It is very easy to become ideological. If we are to follow the promise of Senator Obama's election, we must resist that temptation. I have to believe that there is a way to create a positive opportunity out of Senator Lieberman's dissention. That is exactly what this is- an opportunity.
The Bush Administration has given us plenty of things to rebuke and take a stand on without worrying about Joe Lieberman, not the least of which is a statement to the world as quickly as possible that this country does NOT torture people, friend or foe, ally or enemy.
Many people, during the heat of the primaries, said that Senator Obama was being too soft on Senator Clinton, that he did not have that 'killer instinct' that a politician needs. It turns out, oddly enough, that he was right and the rest of the pundits and blow hards were wrong.
All it takes is one man with courage, and we are each, collectively, that one man. Let's put on that courage to forsake the pointless political tit for tat and look at people from the point of view of what they can contribute to move this country forward.