Today U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman delivered a forceful and compelling speech on the politics of national security. The Independent Democrat from Connecticut had this to say about the Democratic party:
The Bush administration's post-9/11 ideological conversion confronted Democrats with an awkward choice. Should we welcome the President's foreign policy flip-flop? Or should Democrats match it with a flip-flop of our own? Between 2002 and 2006, there was a battle within the Democratic Party over just how to answer this question - a battle I was part of. I felt strongly that Democrats should embrace the basic framework that the President articulated for the war on terror as our own - because it was our own. It was our legacy from Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Clinton. We could rightly criticize the Bush administration when it failed to live up to its own rhetoric, or when it bungled the execution of its policies. But I felt that we should not minimize the seriousness of the threat from Islamist extremism, or the fundamental rightness of the muscular, internationalist, and morally self-confident response that President Bush had chosen in response to it. But that was not the choice most Democrats made. Instead, they flip-flopped.
Lieberman's speech reminded me of this excellent Noemie Emery essay on what happened to the "Truman Democrats." Reading Lieberman's speech, one can't help thinking that a version of it, delivered in the same way, would make a fine addition to the 2008 Republican National Convention. ...