Lieberman's "hawkish" reelection

This kind of drivel is becoming commonplace, but it's still wrong.

The Democratic Party’s base may be dovish, but it accounts for less than twenty-five per cent of the American voting public. It is difficult, therefore, to imagine a serious general-election candidate who does not favor some sort of “enlightened internationalism,” with its possible military implications. (Lieberman’s ultimate victory as an Independent seemed to demonstrate that dovish voters, even in a liberal state such as Connecticut, cannot by themselves unseat a hawkish senator.) But the Democratic Party’s chief problem may be finding a way to arrive at a coherent and persuasive post-Bush foreign policy. Michael E. O’Hanlon, of the Brookings Institution, and Kurt M. Campbell, a former National Security Council official under Bill Clinton, argue in a recent book, “Hard Power: The Politics of National Security,” that Bush Administration incompetence, not Democratic foreign-policy wisdom, accounts for the Democrats’ success in last November’s midterm election. “Without answers of their own to the questions they pose to the Bush Administration about how to keep the country safe and secure, Democrats are likely to find current gains in national polls to be fleeting or illusory,” they wrote. They might have added that, whether or not the public hopes for a period of international tranquillity, the next President, Democrat or Republican, will inherit an extraordinarily difficult set of problems.

The trouble is, Lieberman positioned himself as anything but "hawkish" when he ran for reelection. Quite the contrary.

LIEBERMAN: Well, Tom and Joanne, Ned has got me confused again. But I'll tell you one thing he is wrong about. The situation in Iraq is a lot better, different than it was a year ago....
So I am confident that the situation is improving enough on the ground that by the end of this year, we will begin to draw down significant numbers of American troops, and by the end of the next year more than half of the troops who are there now will be home.

Lieberman lied to the voters of Connecticut. For that he was not only rewarded with reelection, but he's now held aloft as proof that voters don't really want to see us walk away from Iraq, even though that was central to his campaign promises. Reporters, particularly those for The New Yorker, should be clear on that. I thought they fact-checked.