Jonathan Chait on Joe Lieberman (OTOH)

Jonathan Chait is typical of your broadest-minded liberal.

Typically his writing is anchored around the on-the-one-hand/on-the-other-hand (OTOH/OTOH) axis.

Jonathan Chait agrees with me (sort of). In my posting of 16-June Who Has Hurt America More? OBL or GWB?, I presented a strong case based upon cost-benefit analysis, that George Bush has caused America more damage than Osama bin Laden. Jonathan Chait in the Los Angeles Times, today, admits to the following:

Even though all but the loopiest Democrat would concede that Bin Laden is more evil than Bush, that doesn't mean he's a greater threat. Bin Laden is hiding somewhere in the mountains, has no weapons of mass destruction and apparently very limited numbers of followers capable of striking at the U.S.

Bush, on the other hand, has wreaked enormous damage on the political and social fabric of the country. He has massively mismanaged a major war, with catastrophic consequences; he has strained the fabric of American democracy with his claims of nearly unchecked power and morally corrupt Gilded Age policies. It's quite reasonable to conclude that Bush will harm the nation more — if not more than Bin Laden would like to, than more than he actually can.

Chait also argues, that Joe Lieberman's backers are pretending that George Bush is just one other war-time President who does not deserve getting post shots because historically during wartime, 'partisanship stops at the water's edge'. They, says Chait,

piously insist that . . . he's waging a war in America's name — as if Bush were obeying this principle, and as if Bush were just another Republican president rather than a threat of historic magnitude.

The thesis is correct, by any standards. But Chait has to introduce an antithesis: Lieberman deserves support in the Democratic party even if he has, from the beginning, carried that Iraqi water for the worse president in American history.

Personally, I know nothing about the amount of pork Lieberman has sent his state constituency's way. I don't live in Connecticut. But how Chait can take sides in this pissing contest and say that Ned Lamont has less party loyality than Lieberman is beyond me.

It's Lieberman who says he's going run as a third party spoiler-candidate if he loses the primary, not Lamont.

Chait, as always, is unfair, but balanced.