Lieberman Keeps His Chairmanship

After a couple weeks of wrangling and rumormongering, the Democratic caucus decided today to let Joe Lieberman keep his chairmanship of the Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee.

I'm pretty conflicted on this one. On the one hand, I strongly share the nearly unanimous sense in the liberal blogosphere that Lieberman's actions over the past two years have been reprehensible and that he should be stripped of his committee chair. Failing to endorse Barack Obama would have been awkward for a Democratic senator. Endorsing John McCain would have been inappropriate. But actively campaigning on behalf of McCain, repeatedly questioning the qualifications and judgment of Obama, and praising Sarah Palin, was simply beyond any notion of acceptable behavior for someone who wants to be rewarded for his seniority as a member of the Democratic caucus. Furthermore, from a policy standpoint, Lieberman has been a mess. As I said back in June:

On most issues, he is a liberal. On the war in Iraq, he has allied himself with the neo-con right. The war in Iraq is and has been the most important issue for the last 5 years, and the one in which a strong, bipartisan centrist voice has been needed to walk the administration off the ledge. So Senator Lieberman's failure to be a voice of restraint and his enabling of the worst of the neoconservative tendencies has been most disappointing.

So from both a political and a policy standpoint, there are good reasons he should not be rewarded. On the other hand, if the President-elect and Harry Reid wanted him stripped of his committee chair, it would have happened. I simply refuse to believe this was a problem of getting enough votes. So there is something else at work here. Perhaps there have been behind-the-scenes discussions about Lieberman's role in supporting some particularly controversial upcoming agenda items. Or perhaps this is another step in the President-elect's efforts to genuinely repair much of the damage that vindictive partisanship has already done in the halls of Congress.

So I'm faced with a choice between my personal anger and belief that punishment is due, and my recognition that politicians I respect and trust have gone in another direction. While I don't plan on accepting everything the new administration offers us with blind faith, we are still in the early stages of the transition, and the President-elect still has trust capital to spend with this voter.