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Sunday, November 30, 2008

Covering Barack: The New Yorker Vets the President-Elect

Barry Blitt, the cartoonist responsible for the New Yorker's controversial terrorist fist-jabbing cover, among others, returns this week to "vet" Barack Obama. Of course this time around "Vetting" refers to the all important decision of picking a "first" puppy — thus far we know they want a mutt, but that it needs to be hypoallergenic and won't be a girly dog. The cover may not be all that far off the mark, actually, turns out the original meaning of the word "vetting" was to to "submit an animal to examination by a veterinarian."

Copyright 2008 Jupitermedia Corporation All Rights Reserved.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

I'm grateful for Barack Obama

Joan Walsh
salon.com
November 27, 2008

I was getting ready to expand on the sappy Thanksgiving post I wrote on Open Salon last night when news began to unfold Wednesday about the Mumbai attacks. We don't know enough as I write for me to say anything intelligent about this, but I found myself counting my blessings again, in a more somber way, and including Barack Obama and Joe Biden among them.

It now seems particularly ridiculous that Republicans tried to make an issue out of Biden's factual statement, during the campaign, that Obama would be "tested" by our adversaries early in his term. Of course he will, and maybe this set of attacks will be part of it, maybe it will be something brand-new after Jan. 20.

I find myself particularly grateful for Obama's calm and his clear judgment as I think about future awful days like this one. I'm glad he got a jump on his economic team this week, and I'm relatively happy with the news about his foreign policy and defense team as it emerges, particularly Hillary Clinton at State and Susan Rice as U.N. ambassador. Frankly, I'm torn about reports that Obama will keep Robert Gates as secretary of Defense. Like all Iraq war opponents and Bush critics, I'd like a clean break with the past. On the other hand, Gates was an improvement on Donald Rumsfeld, and wasn't responsible for Abu Ghraib or Rumsfeld's retaliation against war skeptics and critics in Defense.

Watching these scenes from Mumbai, I am a little more sympathetic to arguments that Obama needs experience and stability at Defense as he takes charge. But just a little. It would be wrong to let an ugly terror attack, wherever it occurs, shake our values and our commitment to a sane foreign and defense policy. We tried that seven years ago and look where it got us.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I'm grateful for your readership and support.

Copyright ©2008 Salon Media Group, Inc

Thanksgiving...

Jamies Lee Curtis
The Huffington Post
November 28, 2008

Like so many things, its original intent and its current interpretation are out of whack. Just like America. I went to hear Eugene Jarecki speak about his new book, The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men an a Republic in Peril and he explained the sea change that occurred in 1947 with the great expansion of the Executive branch of the government. It was supposed to be balancedwith each branch counterbalancing the other. The Executive branch's fiscal and fundamental obesity epidemic is just one example of the misinterpretations.

I used to think that chicken was a protein but now that they are penned and caged they have become a fat, increasing that content threefold from lack of exercise and movement... sound like anyone you know... any ideas you know? The original idea was thanking God for the bountiful feast at the end of the harvest... or according to my fourth grade textbook, Thanksgiving was supposed to have been when The Pilgrims were saved by the Native Americans, that they had raped and pillaged, and that after being taught to plant corn -- maize -- the Pilgrims were so thankful that they invited the Indians to a supper... Bullshit.

We now know the truth about the Pilgrims and the Native Americans and instead we have turned this into an excuse to gather as families and eat until we are sick. Nice... No Native Americans or Iraqis, Iranians, or, in most white people's cases, African Americans. And certainly no French people present at the feast of reconciliation and gratitude. No, Just Uncle Frank who hates the fact that his brother carves the non-Palin-pardoned turkey poorly ( I betcha it was the one that still quaked in the background as she prattled on ) and that Aunt Alice thinks it is always "too dry" which she slurs during her fifth glass of boxed wine.

Real thanks and giving is from truth. Hard, ugly, painful truth, about ourselves and our families and our nation. So on this Thanksgiving let's try to count our blessings and not our calories, blessings not balance sheets, blessings not division, blessings not bombs.

Thanks to Barack Obama for his courage, for our children that they will get a chance to see real change occur, as Bette and Mae said, "Fasten you seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night ( few years )."

Blessings for our path-cutters... a favorite quote from one of those Greek Genius', "Civilization flourishes when great men plant trees under the shade of which they will never stand."

Blessings for the brave who first said "No, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" and put their lives and limbs on the line for us and the brave men, women and children who continue to fight for the right to fight for the right...

So this Thanksgiving let's fight for the right to disagree, to discourse, to dissemble the things that don't work and plant seeds of change whithin ourselves, our families, our communities, our Nation and our World, that they will bloom and grow and yield new truths that we will all hold... that are and should always be self-evident... That all men, women, children, of every race, creed, color, religion, sexual orientation, are created equal.

Equal for all.

Please God!

Copyright 2008 HuffingtonPost.com

Monday, November 24, 2008

When did experience become a flaw?

Jamison Foser
Media Matters for America
November 24, 2008

Midway through Bill Clinton's first year as president, Time magazine reported that among the new president's problems was "a staff that has almost no White House or executive experience," pointing to then-political director Rahm Emanuel as a prime example.

Fast-forward 15 years: President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Emanuel to serve as his chief of staff. With years of high-level White House work under his belt, not to mention the connections and clout that come from having been one of the most powerful members of Congress, it would be quite a stretch to say that Emanuel lacks the experience to effectively serve Obama. So this time, some in the media have a different complaint. As CNN's Anderson Cooper put it, Emanuel is "probably the ultimate Washington insider. ... [T]he critics will say, well, look, if Obama is talking about change, why is he having a Washington insider?"

So: Emanuel was insufficiently experienced to serve as political director in 1993 -- and now we're to believe that he's too experienced in Washington to serve as chief of staff? What gives? Was there a brief window in 2003 in which Emanuel's level of experience was just right? Or is there something strange about the media's assessment of President-elect Obama's staffing decisions?

That Time assessment of Emanuel in 1993 was not unique. For 16 years, there has been near-universal agreement that the Clinton administration's early struggles (real and perceived) were in large part due to a lack of White House and Washington experience on the part of Clinton's staff.

Clinton hadn't even taken office before USA Today reported in December 1992 that the "limited Washington experience" of the incoming White House chief of staff, Mack McLarty, "raises the specter of Jimmy Carter's inexperienced inner circle." Six months later, Newsweek noted that McLarty's "lack of familiarity with Washington ways is now considered a political liability." The influential journalists Jack Germond and Jules Witcover later wrote that the choice of McLarty had been "a major surprise and the brunt of considerable criticism, on grounds that McLarty, like Clinton himself, was inexperienced in the Washington meat grinder."

By mid-1994, when a staff restructuring resulted in Leon Panetta's appointment as chief of staff, an Albany Times-Union editorial was typical of media reaction:

[Clinton's] sudden shuffle of White House staff is the latest evidence that he has finally grasped a central fact of Washington political life: It's not the place for the inexperienced, no matter how well-intentioned they may be.

[...]

He's also learned that the chief of staff position is no place for a neophyte. It takes someone with Mr. Panetta's credentials as an insider to fill this pivotal post. That's all the more true at a time when the White House is trying to push through key health care and welfare legislation.

During a January 2001 look back at the Clinton presidency, Nightline host Ted Koppel summed up years of conventional wisdom: "The new president had put together a staff with virtually no experience in governing from the White House" -- something Nightline made clear was a mistake.

When President George W. Bush chose Andy Card, who had served in senior White House roles in two previous administrations, as his chief of staff, the selection -- along with decisions to put other longtime Washington insiders in key positions -- was received favorably by the news media.

Three days into Bush's presidency, CNN's Bill Schneider told viewers that "Bush is now surrounded by a lot of insider Washington deal makers, who have a lot of experience; like Dick Cheney and Andrew Card, his chief of staff; Paul O'Neill at treasury, and Donald Rumsfeld at defense. I think, a hard line and a smiling face and a willingness to make deals -- that could be a formula for success." A month later, The Washington Post ran a 2,000-word profile of Card that emphasized the benefit of Card's experience and portrayed him as bringing efficiency and order to the White House.

So, the history is clear: President Clinton was lambasted by the news media for not having enough old Washington hands on his staff; President Bush was praised for choosing veterans of previous Republican administrations.

Which brings us back to the present, and to the bizarre spectacle of journalists and pundits blasting Barack Obama for choosing staff members and Cabinet secretaries who are experienced and qualified.

Here, for example, is MSNBC's Chris Matthews, noting that Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, John Podesta, and Rahm Emanuel either have or are reported to have roles in Obama's transition or administration:

This is what you do when you don't have elections. You simply promote the people ... who had the deputy jobs. You can do this in any bureaucratic state. You could do it in the old Soviet Union, do it anywhere you have a bureaucracy. You don't need to hold elections to promote deputies to the top job when it comes time, right? You don't need elections for this crap, do you? ... You just keep promoting people from within in any old, tired bureaucracy. That's what you do.

This is nothing short of insane.

Eric Holder, reportedly Barack Obama's choice for attorney general, did indeed have one of the "deputy jobs" at the Justice Department -- in the Clinton administration, not the Bush administration. It's a pretty safe bet that if we didn't have an election a few weeks ago -- if the Bush administration were continuing indefinitely -- Eric Holder would not be the next attorney general. It's an even safer bet that Rahm Emanuel would not be chief of staff. Much of the nation may wish the Bush administration never happened, but it did. None of the people Matthews mentioned are being "promoted from within" -- not a single one.

(Matthews, by the way, was unconcerned about hiring officials from former administrations when George W. Bush was doing the hiring: In 2001, he praised Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and Colin Powell as "real heavyweights in terms of experience.")

Matthews' MSNBC colleague Pat Buchanan is very much on the same page, repeatedly complaining that the incoming Obama administration will be filled with "retreads." Yes: Pat Buchanan, born and raised in Washington, D.C.; educated at Georgetown; a veteran of two GOP White Houses and himself twice a candidate for the presidency; a 20-year fixture on cable news -- that Pat Buchanan is complaining about too many "retreads."

That was a common theme on MSNBC, where longtime Washington insiders Chris Matthews, David Gregory, and Christopher Hitchens -- among others -- suggested that the choice of former Clinton administration officials was contrary to the idea of "change":

[BULLET] Chris Matthews: "The possibility that Barack Obama might pick Hillary Clinton to be his secretary of state has a lot of people asking, 'Whatever happened to change, the change we can believe in?' "

[BULLET] David Gregory: "Is this change you can believe in? The Obama team is going to face these questions about big-time Clinton administration people into the fold now in some of the biggest jobs in the Cabinet. Eric Holder certainly fits that bill."

[BULLET] Christopher Hitchens: "This is the woman who, if you were for change that you can believe in, whichever change it was, you were voting against. ... [I]t's Clinton redo, not just Rahm Emanuel. Whatever this is, it's not change."

This has been a sentiment expressed commonly in the media, nowhere more frequently than on MSNBC, but the suggestion that bringing on former Clinton administration officials -- even Clinton herself -- is inconsistent with a desire for change is pure bunk. Asserting such inconsistency requires some deeply flawed assumptions: that everyone who worked in the Clinton administration is alike; that the Clinton and Bush administrations pursued identical policies with identical effectiveness; or that the desire for "change" is simply a desire for change in the types of people who hold government jobs.

People want a change in policy and a change in effectiveness. They want a change from George W. Bush, of whom disapproval is near-universal. The idea that 67 million people voted for Barack Obama because they disliked the Clinton administration is ludicrous. It ignores the wide and deep disgust with the direction Bush has taken the nation and the stunning incompetence with which he has done so. And it overlooks the obvious fact that people voted for Barack Obama because they like him and they like his policy positions.

But there is no evidence -- none -- that the nation as a whole has a deep desire to shun some of the people most qualified and experienced for administration jobs simply because they worked for Bill Clinton. Hard-core Republicans and Washington journalists may have such a desire, but that's about it.

The whining from journalists about Clinton alumni in the Obama administration is even sillier when you consider that they would presumably criticize Obama if he chose people without prior White House experience, as they criticized Bill Clinton. So the only way Obama can escape criticism is if he hires a bunch of people who worked in the Reagan and Bush administrations. Perversely, after two straight elections in which the American people convincingly rejected failed Republican rule, the punditocracy would be less likely to criticize Obama for abandoning his promise of change if he retained the services of the very Bush administration officials who screwed up the country so badly in the first place.

No piece of transition news has rankled the chattering class as much as the rumored selection of Hillary Clinton to be secretary of state -- not, in most cases, because they think her unqualified, but because they just don't like her. Christopher Hitchens, for one, lashed out at the news on MSNBC, leading the cable channel to treat his comments as though they were both surprising and important. They are neither. Hitchens hates the Clintons. Maybe not as much as he hates Mother Teresa, but there is little doubt that he hates them. Christopher Hitchens criticizing a Clinton is roughly as surprising as a Boston native speaking ill of New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter.

Despite the fact that there is no indication that anyone outside of its own studios cares what Christopher Hitchens has to say about the Clintons, MSNBC has played his comments over and over again, and even invited him back on the next day to interview him about their previous interview of him. Host David Gregory explained MSNBC's obsession with Hitchens' comments by insisting -- all evidence to the contrary -- that "everybody is talking about" them.

Hitchens' bizarre comments about Hillary Clinton included his claim that he has never heard that she is respected by military leadership -- a claim that, if true, merely confirms that Hitchens knows far too little about Clinton for his assessment of her to be taken seriously. And he claimed that in 1993, Hillary Clinton instructed her husband not to intervene in the Balkans because she was afraid that it would interfere with her health-care initiative -- but the book he cited to support his claim does not do so.

As Media Matters' Eric Boehlert noted this week, the media has been essentially alone in their anguish about Clinton serving as secretary of state:

The press represents nobody but the press on this topic. Meaning, the press has no political cover on this story because there's no partisan angle to the SoS story, which means their long-running Clinton hatred is just sort of out there, exposed for all to see.

Think about. It's been virtually impossible to find any senior members of Congress--Republican or Democrat--who publicly oppose Clinton as the SoS, which in and of itself is rather astonishing.

And within the liberal blogosphere, where one might expect there to be vocal opposition to Clinton since so many within the netroots opposed her during the primaries, most A-list writers have been extremely quiet in terms of airing opposition.

[...]

So, if you're keeping score at home, that means the Obama White House is in favor of Clinton, Republicans in Congress are in favor, Democrats in Congress are in favor, and liberal activists are, essentially, in favor. (And so are most Americans.)

In the early stages of the last two administrations (both the result of "change" elections), the media made much of the importance of new presidents bringing on old hands with White House experience. Suddenly, they portray such moves as inconsistent with the idea of "change." There are really only two possible explanations for this inconsistency: They are blinded by their hatred of the Clintons, or are desperate for something -- anything -- to use as an excuse to criticize Obama.

Either way (or both), they look like fools by coming down in favor of inexperience. America is a nation at war, with stock and housing markets that are falling faster than a flock of turkeys dropped out of an airplane, a broken health-care system, and countless other problems -- and the punditocracy thinks Barack Obama should refuse to hire anyone who worked in the most successful administration of the past several decades. Incredible.

© 2008 Media Matters for America 

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Time for Him to Go

Gail Collins
Op-Ed Columnist
The New York Times
November 22, 2008

Thanksgiving is next week, and President Bush could make it a really special holiday by resigning.

Seriously. We have an economy that’s crashing and a vacuum at the top. Bush — who is currently on a trip to Peru to meet with Asian leaders who no longer care what he thinks — hasn’t got the clout, or possibly even the energy, to do anything useful. His most recent contribution to resolving the fiscal crisis was lecturing representatives of the world’s most important economies on the glories of free-market capitalism.

Putting Barack Obama in charge immediately isn’t impossible. Dick Cheney, obviously, would have to quit as well as Bush. In fact, just to be on the safe side, the vice president ought to turn in his resignation first. (We’re desperate, but not crazy.) Then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would become president until Jan. 20. Obviously, she’d defer to her party’s incoming chief executive, and Barack Obama could begin governing.

As a bonus, the Pelosi presidency would put a woman in the White House this year after all. On the downside, a few right-wing talk-show hosts might succumb to apoplexy. That would, of course, be terrible, but I’m afraid we might have to take the risk in the name of a greater good.

Can I see a show of hands? How many people want George W. out and Barack in?

A great many Americans have been counting the days all year on their 2008 George W. Bush Out of Office Countdown calendars. I know a lot of this has been going on because so many people congratulated me when the Feb. 1 Bush quote turned out to be from one of my old columns. (“I think we need not only to eliminate the tollbooth from the middle class, I think we should knock down the tollbooth.”)

This was not nearly as good as Feb. 5 (“We ought to make the pie higher”) or Feb. 21 (“I understand small business growth. I was one.”) But we do what we can.

In the past, presidents have not taken well to suggestions that they hand over the reins before the last possible minute. Senator J. William Fulbright suggested a plan along those lines when Harry Truman was coming to the end of a term in a state of deep unpopularity, and Truman called him “Halfbright” for the rest of his life. Bush might not love the idea of quitting before he has a chance to light the Christmas tree or commute the execution of one last presidential turkey. After all, he still has a couple more trips planned. And last-minute regulations to issue. (So many national parks to despoil, so many endangered species to exterminate ... .) And then there’s all the packing.

On the other hand, he might want to consider his legacy, such as it is.

In happier days, Bush may have nurtured hopes of making it into the list of America’s mediocre presidents, but somewhere between Iraq and Katrina, that goal became a mountain too high. However, he might still have a chance to avoid the absolute bottom of the barrel, a spot currently occupied by James Buchanan, at least in my opinion. Buchanan nailed down The Worst President title in the days between Abraham Lincoln’s election and inauguration, when the Southern states began seceding and Buchanan, after a little flailing about, did absolutely nothing. “Doing nothing is almost the worst thing a president can do,” said the historian Michael Beschloss.

If Bush gives up doing nothing by giving up his job, it’s possible that someday history might elevate him to the ranks of the below average. Better than Franklin Pierce! Smarter than Warren Harding! And healthier than William Henry Harrison!

The person who would like this plan least probably would be Barack Obama. Who would want to be saddled with the auto industry’s problems ahead of schedule? The heads of America’s great carmaking corporations are so dim that they couldn’t even survive hearings run by members of Congress who actually wanted to help them. Really, when somebody asks you exactly how much money you need, the answer should not be something along the line of “a whole bunch.”

An instantaneous takeover would also ruin the Obama team’s plan to have the tidiest, best-organized presidential transition in history. Cutting it short and leaping into governing would turn their measured march toward power into a mad scramble. A lot of their Cabinet picks are still working on those 62-page questionnaires.

But while there’s been no drama with Obama, we’ve been living a Technicolor version of “The Perils of Pauline.” Detroit is tied to the railroad tracks and the train is coming! California’s state government is falling into the sea! The way we’re going now, by the time the inauguration rolls around, unemployment will be at 10 percent and the Dow will be at 10.

Time for a change.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Saturday, November 22, 2008

National Security Team of Rivals

Joe Klein
Swampland
Time.com
November 21, 2008

Lots of news from Obamaland on the national security front in the past 24 hours--Hillary Clinton "on track" to become Secretary of State, retired General Jim Jones said to become National Security Adviser (while Republican realist Brent Scowcroft has been advising Obama on National Security)...and some strong flutterings that Obama wants to retain Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense as first reported here last summer, which seems especially credible because no other name has been floated as a potential SecDef.

If true, this is an extremely strong, and wise, national security team. It would reflect a powerful desire on Obama's part to return to the tradition of bipartisan foreign policy, with politics stopping at the water's edge. And it would reflect a growing centrist consensus in the foreign policy/national security spectrum that includes most members of the Bush 41 and Clinton teams--in favor of the primacy of diplomacy over militarism, ready to begin talks with those the Bush Administration considered pariahs (the Taliban, Syria, Iran), but not averse to the use of force--against Al Qaeda, in particular--when necessary.

The Clinton selection is historically luscious: it directly mirrors Abraham Lincoln's choice ofWilliam H. Seward as his Secretary of State. Seward was a U.S. Senator from New York and the favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination in 1860. There was a great deal of skepticism when the inexperienced and little known legislator from Illinois beat Seward for the nomination and then invited him into the Cabinet, but Seward soon came to appreciate, and later adore, Lincoln's skills as President. I expect something similar to happen with Hillary Clinton, the ultimate good soldier and team player in the Senate--and a potentially powerful voice overseas (although I do hope that the assorted Clintonian carnival acts--from the former President's skeevy friends to court jesters like Lanny Davis--will be either muzzled or sent packing entirely).

General Jones is universally respected. He refused a series of major positions offered by the Bush Administration, presumably because he opposed the policies he would have been expected to implement. He did agree to study the security situations in Iraq and Afghanistan for the Bush Administration, and came back with reports that were embarrassingly candid. If appointed, he--not David Petraeus--will be the most important (former) general in the Obama Administration, which will help tilt power back toward the President. (Jones is also a close friend of John McCain's, which may have the effect of bringing McCain inside the tent a bit, and away from the neoconservative extremists whom he "palled around with" for the past decade.)
Of course, strong teams can create huge problems if they don't cohere...and also if they pursue foolish policies. Bush Junior's national security team was thought to be "strong" in 2001--but Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld ran away with it. I don't see that sort of thing happening here, but if this is, indeed, the team--it might be a good idea for Clinton, Gates, Jones, Obama and Biden to go off for a weekend retreat somewhere, have a few drinks and get to know each other.

In any case, this group sends an indelible signal that the President-elect is a confident fellow and absolutely intent on creating a new national unity (and sanity) in Foreign Policy and Security matters. That is very good news.

Copyright 2008 Time Inc.

An Open Letter To Joe Lieberman

Bob Cesca
The Huffington Post
November 19, 2008

Dear Senator Lieberman,

Congratulations! You got away with it! So despite having supported and endorsed the Republican candidate for president -- and going so far as to question the patriotism of the Democratic nominee -- you've managed to keep your chairmanship. By rights, you should've been summarily ejector-seated from your committees, bonked on the head with your gavels -- cartoon-style -- and hauled from the Democratic caucus naked and on a rail whilst being pelted with wadded-up copies of your RNC address.

The aforementioned reasons for this still-lenient serving of justice fails to include the syllabus of other trespasses against you, including, first and foremost, your unwavering support for the Bush administration's unforgivable foreign policy -- a policy which has all but bankrupted our treasury and besmirched America's reputation abroad. Heckuva job, Senator!

One might be inclined to consider your conduct to date as somehow principled -- even mavericky, had it not been so transparently self-serving. Your behavior has been that of a man guided by nothing more than petty vengeance and retribution -- attention-starved opportunism not unlike grade-school instigators and gossip-mongers whose only path to relevance is to play two friends against each other. Worming your way from side to side depending on which kid or clique likes you more.

Now, I completely understand the political reasons for why President-elect Obama and the caucus ultimately chose to keep you around. Unfortunately, the Democrats need your stinky vote -- such as it is -- in order to theoretically break any future Republican filibusters. And there will be many of those to be sure. However, the closer we get to 60 votes in the caucus the better our chances of reversing the craptastical policies and legislation of your favorite Bush administration and the formerly Republican Congress.

Sure, there's no guarantee that you'll vote with the caucus, but you made it clear that you would have pitched a spasmodic, petulant fit and changed your affiliation to the Republican Party from the "Lieberman Loves Lieberman" party or whatever the hell it's called, had you been stripped of your chairmanship. Consequently, the Democratic caucus would'vedefinitely lost your vote. It's an unenviable "possibly" versus "definitely" proposition. And with the caucus being this close to 60 against what will surely be an obstructionist Republican caucus, we have no other choice but to roll the dice with "possibly."

That is until 2010 when the Democrats will hopefully attain enough members, and thus votes, that they won't need your support anymore. Then you can storm off and mind-screw the Republicans for a couple of years until -- and it's probably not good strategy to tip our hand like this, but you know it's coming -- until you lose in 2012.

Nevertheless, you got what you wanted yesterday. Circumstances allowed you to keep your chairmanship irrespective of your weasely and contemptible maneuvering. And more than a few of us on the left actually agree with you for once: you managed to abscond off without adequate punishment.

You got away with it, despite those meddling kids, right?

Not so fast.

I submit to you, Senator Lieberman, that you were punished yesterday more than you realize. Stick with me on this. I'll explain.

I've been a supporter of the president-elect for the better part of a year now, and while I've always recognized a deep intellectualism and multilayered thoughtfulness in the man, it never fully occurred to me how he would use these strengths in a position of leadership. Until this week.

In sharp contrast to your behavior, President-elect Obama hasn't shown any predilection for pettiness or disloyalty, nor has he undermined his allies for the sake of political expedience. He's proved himself to be a man of great character. Of values. I don't need to remind anyonehow he stood by Jeremiah Wright, for example, and at his own political peril when most would've tossed him overboard like political chum.

You, on the other hand, have shown an unapologetic contempt for the party that once nominated you for the vice presidency -- the party that welcomed you back to the fold even though you slipped through the system and defeated the fairly elected Democratic nominee, Ned Lamont, in 2006. You've betrayed your fellow liberals to settle a political score, Senator -- in order to exact some kind of ignoble payback against your former party, against your caucus and against the netroots for merely calling you out on your literal and figurative smooching of the president.

This is behavior President-elect Obama doesn't appear to be capable of. Because he's clearly better than you. In fact, it's not difficult to hypothesize that had you possessed a fraction of his political instincts or any small measure of his morality, you would absolutely not be in this position, Senator.

See, by allowing you to keep your precious chairmanship -- by letting you off the hook -- President-elect Obama, through his political bigness, punished you without punishing you. He beat you yesterday, Senator. He beat you because he let you be you, and underscored it with his demonstrably better angels and strength of character.

In the final analysis, the hard reality is that by not choosing retribution, he made you look...

...small.

And that, Senator, is good enough for me.

Copyright 2008 HuffingtonPost.com