At a Washington, D.C., holiday party dominated by liberals recently, a guest proposed a toast to Sen. Al Franken, "who said what we all wished to say for so many years: 'Lieberman, shut up!' " The sentiment drew laughter and applause. What's become known as the Franken moment offered a rare moment of satisfaction for Democrats in the rancorous debate over health-care reform. Presiding over the Senate, the former Saturday Night Live comedian, speaking as the junior senator from Minnesota, declined Senator Lieberman's request for more time, an affront so allegedly serious that Lieberman's buddy, John McCain, declared that he'd never seen anything like it in his 20-plus years in Congress.
Like so much in D.C., it was not quite what it seemed. Franken was under instructions from party leaders not to indulge anybody's wish for more time, as Democrats raced to complete work on the health-care bill in the face of Republican stalling tactics. Lieberman looked bemused, as though he couldn't fathom being silenced, but later approached Franken to say he knew what was going on and didn't take it personally. That wasn't enough for McCain, whose heated condemnation of Franken, without mentioning his name (another of the Senate's hoary traditions), conjured up memories of the ticket that might have been: McCain and Lieberman.
They're together again in a bond forged in hypocrisy and righteous indignation over real and imagined slights. McCain wanted Lieberman as his running mate, backing off only after he was persuaded that it would prompt a walkout by pro-life delegates at the Republican convention and attract a pro-life third-party candidate who would siphon off enough votes to doom the GOP ticket. With the presidency out of reach, the duo has found common purpose in thwarting the Democrats, exemplified by Lieberman's gratuitous putdown of a Medicare buy-in, a position he had embraced just three months earlier, and McCain's filibustering against funding the troops in Afghanistan, a craven display of cynicism that recalls comedian Lily Tomlin's sage words: "No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up."
Principles are malleable in the heat of debate. But holding up defense funding—something the GOP repeatedly accused Democrats of in recent years—in an effort to stall the health-care bill is a bridge too far. The same Democrat who toasted Franken's silencing of Lieberman envisions 30-second ads in the spring of next year excoriating the Republicans for holding up funds for the troops. "If Democrats opposed war funding, they'd call us Neville Chamberlain," he railed. Still, the GOP filibuster of defense spending a week before Christmas generated little outrage in the media, or even among Democrats, where it was mostly dismissed as another tactical maneuver in the increasingly desperate GOP effort to slow down and kill health-care reform.
To gain perspective on these antics, I e-mailed Tom Mann, a congressional scholar with the Brookings Institution. Here's what he had to say: "McCain is playing to the GOP base, as he did with the choice of Palin, and it is embarrassing to see him further diminish a distinguished career … Holding the defense bill hostage to partisan domestic interests was not a banner moment for this war hero. Lieberman seems little more than a political narcissist. It's very sad to watch the two of them."
The filibuster used to be reserved for matters of great import. Now the Republicans use it even on legislation they support, like extending unemployment benefits and funding the troops, as just another dilatory tactic to drag out debate. In an earlier incarnation, before he seemed motivated solely by revenge on Democrats who supported his 2006 opponent Ned Lamont, Lieberman introduced what he called a graduated filibuster, where the 60-vote threshold is reduced to 58, then 56, and finally, after two weeks, to majority rule. The filibuster is not enshrined in the Constitution, and it doesn't have a proud past, having been used by Southern Democrats to block integration. Hearing Republican Sen. Tom Coburn exhort people to pray that not all 60 Democrats make it to the vote is the kind of excess that is helping keep the disparate Democrats together. For the record, 92-year-old West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd has made every procedural vote on health care this week, thrusting his left fist in the air in defiance as he cast his "aye" votes.
The messy compromises made to move the bill reflect the obstinacy of a Republican caucus purged of moderates and a Democratic caucus that is larger because it includes conservatives elected because they push back against liberal policies. Obama's election was a time for liberals to celebrate, but it didn't mean the country—or at least its elected senators and representatives—had taken a significant turn to the left.
As Mann says, "We are suffering the consequences of a severe ideological polarization of the parties, two consecutive wave elections for the Democrats, an ambitious president, and a dysfunctional Senate. In spite of all of that, we are likely to get major health reform after avoiding economic catastrophe. Not bad." I'll toast to that, as will many Americans.
Eleanor Clift is also the author of Two Weeks of Life: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Politics and Founding Sisters and the Nineteenth Amendment.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
