Partisanship is a very, very unusual thing. Not an uncommon thing, alas, but an unusual thing. When you stop to think about it. Most people don't.
It seems like every night, Jon Stewart is railing against Fox News concerning their massive narrative shift after Obama's Inauguration. You juxtapose a few clips of Bill O'Reilly calling the Tea Party protestors patriots with a few clips of Bill O'Reilly calling anti-war protestors unpatriotic. Laughs ensue. Etc. While I may lean left, I do think it is a shame that we don't have somebody comparing quotes from insurgent Democrats in 2004 to quotes from entrenched Democrats in 2010. Perhaps they are doing that sort of thing on Fox News. I wouldn't know anything about that.
But what is one to do when one finds that same narrative switch in themselves? This is the question I hope to touch on here. I am having some trouble wrapping my head around it. I do not think I could possibly do it full justice. This is only my best, first attempt. A scratching of the surface.
I would like to do this by focusing on two senate candidates, four years apart, shunned by their respective political parties and forced to go it alone.
I live in California, where one can either register with a political party, or register as "declining to state" a political party. I have chosen the latter. I am not terrifically fond of our two party political system, although most of the time I end up voting for a candidate next to the letter D. I have long been a fan of a four party structure, where candidates are evaluated along social and economic axes. As a writer, a fan of narratives and drama, I am excited about Crist's announcement. But I also think that I might almost vote for him -- were I still a Floridian, and even though I may not agree with him as much as his democratic rival, Congressman Meek -- just on the principal of promoting earnest third party candidates.
So then why do I still have such a harsh opinion of one Senator Joseph Lieberman, [I-CT]?
When one compares their situations, the differences are slight, trivial. Lieberman stayed in the Democratic primary up until the end, losing to Ned Lamont. Crist has bowed out of the primary early. But I suspect Crist would have stayed in the race if he could have, hedging his bets, were the deadline to file as an independent not 24 hours off. Lieberman was an incumbent Democratic senator trying to keep his seat, while Crist is an incumbent Republican governor trying to make a move to Washington. But clearly, Crist has been portrayed as establishment by his Republican rival Rubio. As a Republican, Crist was a nonincumbent running with all the disadvantages of incumbency.
Perhaps, as an argument, I might hide behind Lieberman's boldness. His unapologetic nature. The fact that he was promising to run as an independent before he even lost the primary. There seemed to be something bold and self-assured there, where Crist seems much more reluctant. And yet I don't think I would want to seriously craft an excuse based on tone. For starters, it's far too subjective. In the end, it's still an excuse, and Crist and Lieberman are still walking quite similar paths.
I could take an issue-based approach, certainly. Divorce myself from the drama and focus on issues. Lieberman was always a moderate democrat. Liberal on social issues (pro Gay rights, pro gun control) and hawkish on foreign policy (unabashedly pro Iraq War. Still.) As a critic of the Iraq War from the get go, I would be well justified in disliking Joe Lieberman. His endorsement of John McCain (a man whom I respected during the first half of the 00s, until his blatant rightwing course correction) and his one-man crusade against the public option -- both occurring after his 2006 reelection -- only add fuel to the fire. And yet I have an immediate gut-level positive reaction to Crist's move, despite his proven record as a center-right politician. I disagree with Crist on many of the issues that I agree with Lieberman on -- gun rights and gay rights to name a couple. It is true that Crist seems to be moving to the center on certain issues since his independent swing. Education and Offshore Drilling are the most obvious of these. But if I were to engage in an honest examination of both politicians' positions over the years, it would be challenging to make a pro Charlie Crist argument of it. I have had agreements and disagreements with both characters, but in a head to head Lieberman would almost certainly come out on top. I am sure to have far more agreements with a socially liberal war hawk than an all around conservative with a handful of notable exceptions.
There are other factors, certainly. Crist is an all around more likable personality than Lieberman. But in the during the 2000 campaign, Bush was a much more likable personality than Gore, and that didn't stop me then. One could more easily structure a loyalty argument against Lieberman, juxtaposing his place on the Democratic ticket in 2000 against his endorsement of the Republican ticket in 2008. But as I've said before, I find loyalty to one's political party quite a strange and potentially harmful concept. I find Representative Cole's remark on the third page of this article deplorable. Since when is one's political party such a high priority anyhow? It certainly wasn't when the constitution was written.
I could even make an argument of maturity, based on my aging four years since Lieberman made his party switch. Perhaps I am somehow more independently minded, less partisan than I was four years ago? But no. I have never been registered with a political party, not once, since I first registered to vote in time for the 2004 election. I don't think I can hide behind that one.
In fact, this hiding instinct is really the root of this whole mental dilemma. It is a habit that I suspect those who spend more than a few moments a day reading about and thinking about political matters fall into quite often, whether they realize it or not. We find ways of justifying why Action X by a politician from their side is more deplorable than the quite similar Action Y from a politician on our side. The easy, semi-recent example here was when democrats and like-minded liberals went after Mark Sanford, but resented similar accusations against their own sitting president a mere decade ago. "At least we're not being hypocrites," they would say in reference to Republican platforms of family values. And yet by using that same excuse they were engaging in an equally-damning hypocrisy. And in this manner, on countless issues, both parties have created a situation where actions they undertake are right and just merely because they have taken them. And actions the other party has undertaken are wrong, misguided, using the same reasoning.
While everybody is a hypocrite some of the time, this is not a cycle I particularly want to wrap myself in. And I feel that now is the time, while I am still young and have only successfully voted one president into office, to draw lines in a wet cement. Lines in the sand can erode with the political wind, and I would prefer etch my boundaries in a less impermanent medium.
And yet the question remains. What to do about Charlie Crist and Joe Lieberman? Here is my cement line. Perhaps it will be resurfaced in time, but not by the mere actions of one politician, or in the span of a single shift of the party in power.
A credible third party candidate with a decent shot at the office in question is a rare thing. It is something worth encouraging. Particularly when their fundraising hurdles are so intense -- which is incidentally, the main reason I have zero sympathy for these arguments from both sides that somehow Charlie Crist is taking the selfish, easy route. It simply does not compute with the fiscal realities of the matter. Anyhow, so long as there is a decent amount of overlap between their opinions and my own, and the candidate in question does not implode under the weight of an inexcusable scandal, then they have will have my vote. But after obtaining office, I am free to evaluate that candidate's performance as I will. They will be held to a higher standard during the reelection campaign.
From what I knew of Lieberman in 2006, using this current standard, I would have voted for him. I may not have liked his position on the wars we were (and still are) fighting. But frankly, we need more [I]s in congress. And moderate voices such as his are sorely lacking, particularly in the senate.
From what I know of Lieberman now, I would not vote for his reelection. Not because of his endorsement of McCain, which I couldn't care less about. But his threat to side with the Republicans on a filibuster against the public option was too much. It is not something I would have anticipated in 2006, as it seems quite out of character with the socially liberal Joe Lieberman I knew then (and with his previous commitment toward a Medicare Buy-in proposal). This action in particular gave off a peculiar lobbyist stench -- the sort of action that reeks of nonindependence, quite frankly. It is not the sort of thing I would encourage with a vote for reelection.
Charlie Crist is now in the same boat, exactly where he belongs. I am eagerly looking forward to the drama of the Florida senate race this year, and I -- tentatively -- wish him the best of luck. It is absolutely worth supporting a fiscal conservative and a moderate without an [R] next to his name. As those marked in such a manner have shown the remarkable ability to band together on even the most trivial of legislation lately. Charlie Crist's demonstration of his independence is warmly appreciated. However, I intend to keep a close eye on him. Should he win, his reelection campaign will perhaps be judged more critically.
This is somewhat moot, of course. I am no longer a Floridian, and I never was a Nutmegger. But I can hope for a credible independent candidate in California. Certainly in this strange political climate we find ourselves in, such hypotheticals are sure to turn up with increasing frequency.
And I should note that this is not a prescription for action. This was only an attempt to analyze my conflicting attitudes toward two quite-similar situations. An effort to make sure that my attitudes and values are not conditional on what political persuasion an individual happens to possess. Of course, you might arrive -- fairly -- at an entirely different conclusion. However you do it, I would encourage you to think about such things. It can be such a hassle to flip your talking points one hundred and eighty degrees every four to eight years.
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