Horowitz: The Moment Calls for a Republican Joe Lieberman

Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Rob Horowitz, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

Joe Lieberman PHOTO: Official Congressional photo

When Congress returns in January, the stand-off between Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader McConnell on the rules for a Senate trial will in all likelihood be resolved in short-order.

The current stalemate is a lose/lose situation, which both these experienced and shrewd politicians nearly certainly already recognize. Speaker Pelosi knows that she has limited leverage and can only delay sending the articles of impeachment over for a short-period of time before she detracts from her credible claims that the House of Representatives assembled a strong case to remove the president and his continued and ongoing abuses of power require expeditious action.

Senate Majority Leader McConnell knows that by saying “I’m not an impartial juror” even though all senators have to take an oath where they pledge to be unbiased, he created a political problem for himself and his party-one that is compounded by the fact that more than 70 % of the American public believes that witnesses like John Bolton, the former National Security Adviser, who have first-hand knowledge should be called and that documents should be provided by the White House.

The likely compromise, which was hinted at by an influential Senate Republican leader, Senator Roy Blunt(R-MO) this past weekend, is that the case will be made for and against removal and then there will be Senate votes on whether or not to require witnesses and subpoena documents.

As the trial will soon commence in the U.S. Senate, the Republicans are very much in need for their own Joe Lieberman to step forward. Several weeks after President Clinton finally admitted he did have an affair with Monica Lewinsky, Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT) went to the floor of the Senate and gave a 24-minute speech rebuking the president in no uncertain terms, while at the same time rejecting calls for impeachment. He did so despite the White House and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle urging him not to.

Leiberman remarked, “The last three weeks have been dominated by a cacophony of media and political voices calling for impeachment or resignation or censure, while a lesser chorus implores us to move on and get this matter behind us. Appealing as that latter option may be to many people who are understandably weary of this crisis, the transgressions the president has admitted to are too consequential for us to walk away and leave the impression for our children today and for our posterity tomorrow that what he acknowledges he did within the White House is acceptable behavior for our nation's leader. On the contrary, as I have said, it is wrong and unacceptable and should be followed by some measure of public rebuke and accountability.”

Lieberman concluded, “Let us as a nation honestly confront the damage that the president's actions over the last seven months have caused, but not to the exclusion of the good that his leadership has done over the past six years, nor at the expense of our common interest as Americans. And let us be guided by the conscience of the Constitution, which calls on us to place the common good above any partisan or personal interest, as we now in our time work together to resolve this serious challenge to our democracy.”

Lieberman’s moral voice paved the way for other Democrats to criticize President Clinton in more than cursory terms. It was the first essential step in Democratic Senators moving to censure Clinton (This initiative failed because Republicans opposed it, believing that is no more than a wrist slap).

Our current moment calls for a Republican Joe Lieberman--a senator that will plainly and straightforwardly say that withholding nearly $400 million of military aid from Ukraine, an ally threatened by our adversary Russia, in order to leverage the investigation of a political opponent was seriously wrong, endangering our national security and the integrity of our elections. As was the case with Lieberman, this can be coupled with a rejection of removing the president, along with a move at the appropriate time for censure.

The body politic needs to plainly state what more than 7-in-10 Americans believe: that what President Trump did was seriously wrong. While it is reasonable to argue that the people should decide whether or not President Trump should be removed from office in the upcoming election and Congress should not short-circuit that decision, it is essential that we send a message that the president’s actions in Ukraine were not “perfect’’; that it is counter to our values as a nation and our expectations of our president to abuse power by putting private political interests ahead of the national interest and to do so recklessly.

With apologies to Paul Simon and Joe DiMaggio, Mitt Romney, Lamar Alexander, Rob Portman, Susan Collins, “a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.”

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits, businesses, and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.

PHOTO: Official Congressional photo