The New Republic — especially Jon Cohn and Jon Chait — has actually done a very good job of covering the health care debate. Chait has an interesting take on Joe Lieberman that might be pretty explanatory (his earlier post on Lieberman was quite prescient):
I think one answer here is that Lieberman isn’t actually all that smart. He speaks, and seems to think, exclusively in terms of generalities and broad statements of principle. But there’s little evidence that he’s a sharp or clear thinker, and certainly no evidence that he knows or cares about the details of health care reform. At one point during the 2000 recount, the Gore campaign explained to Lieberman why lowering standards for military ballots would be totally unfair and illegal, and Lieberman proceeded to go on television and subvert the campaign’s position. Gore loyalists interpreted this as a sellout, but perhaps the more plausible explanation was that Lieberman — who, after all, badly wanted to be vice-President — just didn’t understand the details of the Gore position well enough to defend it. The guy was taken apart by Dick Cheney in the 2000 veep debate.
I suspect that Lieberman is the beneficiary, or possibly the victim, of a cultural stereotype that Jews are smart and good with numbers. Trust me, it’s not true. If Senator Smith from Idaho was angering Democrats by spewing uninformed platitudes, most liberals would deride him as an idiot. With Lieberman, we all suspect it’s part of a plan. I think he just has no idea what he’s talking about and doesn’t care to learn. Lieberman thinks about politics in terms of broad ideological labels. He’s the heroic centrist voice pushing legislation to the center. No, Lieberman doesn’t have any particular sense of what the Medicare buy-in option would do to the national debt. If the liberals like it, then he figures it’s big government and he should oppose it. I think it’s basically that simple.
What’s almost surreal about The New Republic is how, amidst the sane, and often excellent, contributions of many of the reporters, is all the crazy stuff from Marty Peretz. Today, he’s mad that Ezra Klein said something mean about Joe Lieberman:
I’ve known him for years and he is a conscientious man and a man of conscience, besides. They are different, and he scores high on both counts.
I do not know Ezra Klein, and I do not recall reading any of his writing, except the one today in the Washington Post online. It is his screed against Senator Lieberman to which my attention was called by the former editor of TNR, Chuck Lane, also in the Post.
That’s it for Peretz: Lieberman and Lane are his friends, Klein is a nobody he’s never heard of. End of argument.
It’s a shame Peretz used to pay the bills (EDIT: still pays some of the bills) at TNR.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
I agree with his assessment, I think people credit Senator Joe Liebermann (I – Insurance/Israel) with more intelligence than he has. The Kos Kidz spoiled his party in 2006 and he wants revenge for it. That just helped to bring out his inner asshole for all to see. His contradictory statements about Medicare and the like shows that he really don’t give a shit, if the left is for it then he is against it.
Joe is in it for Joe and that is about it. I think he is deliberately burning his bridges and he really don’t care about it one bit other than the anger he will create at Kos and the like.
JR
There’s only one comma in that goddamn sentence, Marty! We’re The New Republic: we don’t put just one comma in a sentence!
/peretzrage
bend
God, I generally try to avoid Peretz’s writing for the same reason I avoid those of Robert Spencer McCain and other objective racists, but I see not that he is similarly avoidable on simple style grounds.
That post is so poorly written as to be almost Palin-esque.
kid bitzer
strangely enough, when lieberman was a college kid, he was flat brilliant. i know people who taught him then, who say he was intellectually head and shoulders above his peers. whatever general intelligence is (i.e., the stuff that chait is saying he doesn’t have now), he had a lot of it back then.
the human wreckage we see before us now is the result of intellectual laziness more than a lack of basic intelligence. that plus a complete lack of engagement with policy. he is not doing the homework to make himself well-informed.
never underestimate how much ignorance, laziness, and lack of curiosity can do together to simulate stupidity. they can do so much that at some point you have to say: stupid is as stupid does. he has made himself a thoughtless thug.
JR
I think this is the obvious response:
http://gop.am/yLVY
Notice anything different? Me neither.
BDeevDad
Another viewpoint on Lieberman that uses the Chait article. Bad Jew AND stupid.
JR
Of course, if we know anything about Peretz, it’s that he’s a great judge of young writers.
Warren Terra
.
Isn’t this something of an embarrassing admission? Peretz is the “Editor-In-Chief” of The New Republic, a Washington DC Political journal that at its height was fairly wonky and claimed to be “the in-flight magazine of Air Force One” during a previous Democratic administration. Ezra Klein is an important alumnus of a competing Washington poitical magazine, The American Prospect. As TNR has drifted both rightwards and into realms of nonsense, TAP has been making a serious effort to supersede TNR in the territory it once claimed, of being the most important center-left Journal Of Ideas. Case in point: while TNR is closely tied to neocons and genuine cons (in both senses; Krauthammer is a contributing editor), TAP is closely tied to Podesta and the Center For American Progress.
You’d think the “Editor-In-Chief” of TNR might pay occasional attention to TAP. He might notice one of its rising stars, a guy who was trained at TAP initially as a writing fellow and who wrote there for years and years, many times a day on the website and occasionally in the paper version. A person who cemented his role among left-leaning Washington politics and policy writers when he created the now-famous “Journo-list”. And yet Peretz claims to be ignorant of him. Not something I think he should brag about.
Warren Terra
Aren’t you being unfair to Ruth Shalit by only hyperlinking Stephen Glass?
Besides, surely the true shame in Peretz’s fostering young writers is his famed “mini-me”, Jamie Kirchik. Stephen Glass may have been a serial fabulist, but he was largely harmless, as he spun his yarns in the service of light, meaningless articles. Kirchik just spills pure bile, often on important subjects or to launch personal attacks directed at targets whose boots he isn’t fit to kiss.
M. Bouffant
At least they keep Peretz locked in his own little compound, so the chances of encountering his insanity on a casual visit to the TNR site are slim to none.
BDeevDad
I wonder how many TNR writers will soon be fired because of all the anti-Lieberman posts going up.
Napoleon
As easy as it is to make fun of Marty’s post the most disturbing aspect of it is that when you boil it down its just a more naked, in-artful expression of what is standard Villager fare. For example the circling the wagons around Scooter Libby or things from “journalist” like Richards Cohen’s comment about someone or other (Cap Weinberger?) that he couldn’t be guilty of something or other because he saw him buying toilet paper at the local Piggly-Wiggly or some such.
Buy the way, is the fact Lane contacted him yesterday a little show of the slip that there is a concerted push back against Ezra part of it coming directly from a WaPo editorial board member?
@Warren Terra:
Putting aside Marty and the neocon bend of TNR, TAP is still every bit as good as the best of TNR, IMO. Mother Jones which I looked at in books stores a few times in the late 70s/early 80s had impressed me at that time a little like the Nation does now, polemic, but the last 2 years I have been reading it and think it also is in a similar league and content as TAP.
valdivia
I am running out to start a very early day but I have to tell you that Marty is now again paying the bills at TNR. They got bought by a canadian company a couple of years back and then last year they had to sell and Marty put the money together and bought it back.
kay
Where’s the evidence that Lieberman is a “man of conscience”?
He’s been in the Senate forever. What’s his signature “conscience” issue? Promoting the Iraq war was hardly brave. All the powerful folks were gung-ho on Iraq. The security state he promotes from within the his perch at Homeland Security is both politically safe and wildly profitable for private contractors.
Can someone point me to a time Lieberman opposed an entrenched power?
Beating up on anti-war people doesn’t count. They don’t have any power.
His “conscience” seems to align perfectly with the status quo.
mai naem
Oh, yes, Lieberprick is just soooo stupid he managed to get into Yale and become Connecticut’s AG. BTW he was no legacy so you ain’t talking GWB here. Yeah, he’s just sooo stupid he managed to get stuff put into some Conn. town so that his uncles property which he was the executor of(the uncle’s estate) would shoot up in value. This came up in 06. He’s so stupid that his wifey can goes out and becomes a lobbyist. This is such a ridiculous post from Chait I am left speechless. Lieberprick is not stupid he’s just a major league asshole. I tell you I’m a believer in karma and this POS is asking for some seriously bad karma.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Jesus Christ, the first paragraph is word-for-word what all the Bush lickers said about Bush II. Fuck that noise and the person making it. As for making this about some sort of Jewish stereotype, fuck that noise and the person making it with a rusty pitchfork, sideways everyday and twice on Sunday.
Lieberman is a dick, he knows he’s a dick and he enjoys being a dick. He could be a fucking Buddhist and he’d be a dick. If he were a Wiccan, he’d be a Wiccan dick. In fact his towering pox-riddled dickishness is so prominent that I doubt many people have time to consider the fact he’s Jewish.
aimai
What would conscience and conscientiousness mean if it produced Lieberman–a mass of flailing spiteful arms, and spineless, poisoned, resentment– like an angry anemone? These words do not mean what Marty thinks they mean.
aimai
bob h
David Gergen defended Lieberman by saying he knew him at Yale and he was one of the “outstanding young men in the country” in the 60’s. I think that is it; Lieberman is a man who peaked a long time ago, but just can’t acknowledge he is way past his sell-by date.
GregB
It sounds like Peretz is ready to do a weepy Youtube posting deploring us all to leave Joe Lieberman alone!
Al Gore helped to foist this sanctimonious douchebag onto us all and I’ll never forgive him for that.
-G
Kiril
@Warren Terra:
Well it would be, if it weren’t such a transparent lie.
Nethead Jay
@kommrade reproductive vigor: Come now, tell us how you really feel… ;)
But yeah, his dickitude aside, I think Holy Joe is a vain and petty relic of a crumbling political system, a small man with delusions of grandeur. He may have had ideals a long time ago, but the seem to have fallen by the wayside over the years.
kay
@Kiril:
I knew it was a lie. It made me laugh because it’s so small town to deny knowledge of the person. That means Klein’s less important than the writer.
It’s real common among pretentious people, and completely transparent.
He added “don’t recall” though, so he’s covered.
oh really
In a way I’m surprised this is even a topic of discussion. When has anyone seen or heard Lieberman say or do anything that one would associate with uncommon (or even significant) intelligence? Dog, knows the man crams his gigantic head in front of cameras every chance he gets, so there ought to be something on file in which he gives a dazzling performance. If there is, I’ve never seen it.
Kid bitzer’s description of the young Lieberman could be true. The discussion’s about Bush’s intelligence never made much sense to me. Bush’s “stupidity” seemed like more the product of profound intellectual laziness than an inherent lack of intelligence. However, after a lifetime of coasting, there was no ability to learn left (even if there had been any desire), so it wasn’t surprising that he came off as an idiot — for all practical purposes he was and is an idiot.
I get much the same impression of Lieberman. In both men there is also the problem of overwhelming ego. When a person spends all day every day obsessed with himself, there isn’t any time left to think about anything else.
It’s a shame, but lots of Americans may die so that Joe’s ego can be fed.
mandarama
@Kiril:
Hahaha! Thanks for digging that up. Epic Fail for Marty…as usual. That jab at Ezra sounded like a 13-year-old girl sniping to her clique.
Marc
“I do not know Ezra Klein, and I do not recall reading any of his writing, though that did not prevent me from calling him part of the “juicebox mafia” last year. But if the editor who published Stephen Glass criticizes him, that’s good enough for me.” – Marty Peretz
liberal
@Warren Terra:
What in God’s good name are you talking about? Peretz purchased TNR (IIRC with the help of his heiress wife’s fortune) in 1970s. It was all downhill from there.
I don’t think anyone familiar with its history could call TNR center-left after sometime in the early to mid 1980s.
Sure, there were some domestic issues they were good on, but overall, the rag has been repulsive for awhile now. Just look at the whole Bell Curve fiasco.
El Cid
I’m happy to entertain suggestions that Lieberman is dumb, but his goals here are (a) to undercut any reforms to health care that would in any way inconvenience insurance companies and other big money interests; (b) to harm any old style notions that government can be used to make better the lives of the vast majority; and (c) hurt the Democratic Party and particularly its liberal / progressive / not-rightist wings any way he can.
And he’s acting in ways which seem to be doing well on (a), (b), and (c). Why would this be evidence of “dumb”?
liberal
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
Actually, a good friend of mine claimed he watched a Bush/Anne Richards debate, and that Bush destroyed her.
Not saying that Bush II is of high intelligence, but perhaps a combination of (a) dry-drunk rotting of his brain, and (b) a complete lack of intellectual curiousity make him appear dumber than he is (or was).
Napoleon
@liberal:
Years ago, after it was pretty clear that Iraq was a complete fiasco, I heard audio of some speeches and/or debates with junior from his governor years, and he was significantly more articular then he was as President at that point. If my memory is correct Fallows may have done something on his blog. At some point he was watching a bunch of old footage of debates to prepare an article and he noticed a real difference in Bush.
tomvox1
@Kiril:
Cold busted (maybe Marty’s going as “senile” as Joe, not remembering stuff he’s said a few months back…)–nicely done.
Agree with others here: Lieberman’s not stupid, just venal, vindictive and megalomaniacal.
tomvox1
@Napoleon:
Phoenix Woman
@kid bitzer:
That’s the thing about evil: It has a way of making its practitioners stupid, even when they start out with plenty of smarts. It’s moral as well as intellectual laziness. (See also: Giuliani, Rudolph.)
And of course the irony is that, since he married his second, hyper-Orthodox wife, he figures that he’s super-holy now since he walks on the Sabbath.
jetan
He was smart enough to completely screw Harry Reid. I realize that’s setting the bar pretty low.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@liberal: Yes, but the point is, “He’s not that smart (compared to elitist egg-head liberals like Gore)” was one of the ways Bush was sold to Das Base. It was B.S. then, it’s B.S. now with the “victim of a stereotype” adding a side order of stink.
Yes, I know I’m being tedious about this.
Bellwetherman
Joseph Lieberman published two books while still in his 20s–a political biography of the Democratic boss of Connecticut politics, and a history of the attempt to control nuclear weapons in the late 1940s. Both were published by Houghton Mifflin, hardly a vanity press. His interests at the time demonstrate a wide-ranging intellect. He is–or was–a very bright man.
Warren Terra
@Liberal, #26
I meant TAP is competing with The Washington Monthly (which I don’t read), not TNR, to be /the/ important, serious center-left journal- although TNR was still called that during Clinton.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
This is why TNR gave Marty his own corner online. He could rant, and the rest of the site could be the other writers. And you could choose to ignore Marty.
CalD
I certainly buy that Lieberman is a bit of a dunce. The same could be said of half the people in congress. An election is a popularity contest, not an IQ test. We do elect a few smart people here and there, but it’s mostly coincidental.
DougJ
He could rant, and the rest of the site could be the other writers. And you could choose to ignore Marty.
It’s a good system.
Bobby Thomson
Occam’s Razor: Lieberman is a corrupt conservative who is doing exactly what he was sent to the Senate to do, by paleocons like Bill Buckley and the people in Hartford who sign the checks.
thomas
@liberal:
I subcribed in the mid to late 80’s. Dropped it when I got tired of reading the excuses for Raygun/Bush escapades and it had turned into the publicity arm of the Likud party.
Notorious P.A.T.
Marty Peretz is an a**hole.
Notorious P.A.T.
@Napoleon:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/01/27/cohen/print.html
If anyone can read Richard Cohen waxing on about Weinberger without puking, he’s a better person than I.
Jay B.
Jonah Goldberg is an author who just got a million dollar advance. Getting published is not a sign of intelligence.
That said, I think you can be intellectually stunted and smart. Lieberman, by most accounts, was an interesting young guy. He sold his soul to become a Senator and the Senate can take away even the most basic sense of humanity from any egomaniac who enters there…and stays.
liberal
@Warren Terra:
Anyone calling it that during the Clinton era was wrong.
liberal
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
That whole thing with the base was really funny, given which schools Bush II attended, starting with that prep school (which one escapes me at the moment).
liberal
@liberal:
I should add, I think Eric Alterman, in his excellent book, Sound and Fury, had a chapter entitled “Even the liberal New Republic…”
Notorious P.A.T.
How dare you suggest that religion might make someone a worse person exclamation point!
Left Coast Tom
I think Lieberman was very clear as to what he values when he named his political “party” in 2006: Connecticut for Lieberman. Overwhelming narcissism isn’t usually associated with conscientiousness.
Dan
The funniest thing about contrasting that Peretz tirade against the Chait piece you link is that Chait more or less paraphrases the Ezra line that got Peretz and Lane all worked up…
Klein:
Chait:
… and he links to another Ezra post as his evidence, to boot.
Hob
@kommrade reproductive vigor: “a Wiccan dick”
Dammit, I have to get to work and now I’m occupied with imagining the neo-pagan version of Holy Joe. I live in northern California so this is easier to do. If such a thing appears during my lifetime, I know it’ll be a sign of social progress, but I’ll still be yelling at my TV – things like “you dumb fuck, Robert Graves made that shit up” – as he drones on about how “the unbroken tradition of Mother Goddess worship upon which our civilization was [secretly] founded” means we have to help Ireland invade Morocco.
And he would still oppose health care reform with the same excuses he does now, but he would do so while naked.
asiangrrlMN
@kommrade reproductive vigor: I agree most heartily with this (especially the rusty pitchfork part). Joe is a smug, complacent, self-
gratifyingsatisfied asshole who enjoys being a dick. He is not stupid, though I would agree that he is intellectually-incurious at this point.@Hob: Joe naked was NOT an image I needed! But Wiccan dick? Love it. (And, yes, I know that krv mentioned it first).
R-Jud
@Hob:
Hey! It’s “sky-clad”.
Tom Hilton
Agreed–but they’ll have to cover it at least this well for a very long time to make up for the damage they did in 1993 (and god help us, Betsy McCaughey is still around and still a sociopath).
Hob
@R-Jud: Whoops… yes, I should know better. My parents will be ashamed of me.
Hob
@asiangrrlMN: I’m sorry to have cursed you with unwanted images. I guess I was trying to foist them off onto other people to get them out of my head – it’s like The Ring.
Sadly, Lieberman is actually the only politician who’s ever appeared in my dreams; he wasn’t naked, but it was still distressing because we were both house guests at the same place and I dreaded his dinner conversation… plus I had to wait a long time to use the bathroom, because Joe had fallen asleep in there. I drew a comic about it, and then wasn’t sure I should have revealed this thing about my mind.
MNPundit
Ah, Marty Peretz. Doing his best to make anti-semitism look good since 1974.
Leah
Just like to point out the delicious irony of Marty’s dismissal of Ezra as an unknown nothing in view of the Marty’s own inspiring rise to wealth and influence by way of marriage.