Lamont Flip Flops On Lieberman's Lament
By California Yankee Posted in 2006 — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
The New York Times reports Connecticut’s millionaire anti-war Democratic Senate candidate, Ned Lamont wasn't always critical of Senator Lieberman's 1998 rebuke of President Clinton over Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinski.
Lamont wrote to Senator Lieberman in 1998 praising Lieberman's speech:
“I supported your statement because Clinton’s behavior was outrageous: a Democrat had to stand up and state as much, and I hoped that your statement was the beginning of the end,” Mr. Lamont, then a cable television executive, wrote in an e-mail message to the senator’s Washington office on Sept. 16, 1998, two weeks after Mr. Lieberman’s speech.
[. . .]
He urged Mr. Lieberman to “stand up and use your moral authority to put an end to this snowballing mess,” and suggested that “It’s time for you to make up your mind and speak your mind as you did so eloquently last Thursday.”
“I’m the father of three and the thought that Clinton testifying about oral sex before the grand jury may be broadcast into my living room is outrageous,” Mr. Lamont wrote. “This sorry episode is an embarrassment to me as a father and to us as a nation.”
Lamont's Criticism of Senator Lieberman's scolding of Clinton was as insincere as it was a pathetic attempt to revise history. As I posted yesterday, contrary to Lamont's assertion that Senator Lieberman's takedown of Clinton made the Lewinski affair a media spectacle, news of Clinton's Monica Lewinski affair was instantly a "media spectacle." News anchors Rather, Brokaw, and Jennings all left Cuba, where they were covering Pope John Paul's visit, in order to report on Clinton’s sexual misconduct.
Read the rest.
While Lamont is flip flopping his position on Senator Lieberman's lament. Lieberman is defending his rebuke of Clinton:
"It was important for someone who was a Democrat to stand up and call on him publicly to accept more responsibility for what he had done," Lieberman said Friday. "In that case, I stood up and did what I believed was right for our country."
The senator said his personal dismay evolved into "a larger, graver sense of loss for our country, a reckoning of the damage that the president's conduct has done to the proud legacy of his presidency."
In the end it may well be Lieberman's willingness to take consistent principled stands he believes are right, even though unpopular, that will win the Senator reelection.
From California Yankee.
If one reads the original letter and not just the NYT essay, it is clear that Lamont was very consistent, both in his concern over what he felt would be an unnecessary spectacle and practice unbecoming of a President. Being concerned about both things is not mutually exclusive.
His original letter:
I reluctantly supported the moral outrage you expressed on September 3. I was reluctant because I thought it might make matters worse; I was reluctant because nobody expressed moral outrage over how Reagan treated his kids or Gingrich lied about supporting term limits (in other words, it was selective outrage); I was reluctant because the Starr inquisition is much more threatening to our civil liberties and national interest than Clinton's misbehavior. . . .
Unfortunately, the statement was the beginning of a process that has turned more political and morally offensive. I'm the father of three and the thought that Clinton testifying about oral sex before the grand jury may be broadcast into my living room is outrageous. The Starr report read like a tabloid, not a legal recitation, and that streamed into my home via every medium available.
This sorry episode is an embarrassment to me as a father and to us as a nation. If Clinton has a sex problem, mature adults would have handled this privately, not turned it into a political crusade and legal entanglement with no end in sight.
You have expressed your outrage about the president's conduct; now stand up and use your moral authority to put an end to this snowballing mess. We all know the facts, a lot more than any of us care to know and should know. We've made up our minds that Clinton did wrong, confessed to his sin, maybe he should be censured for lying--and let's move on.
It's time for you to make up your mind and speak your mind as you did so eloquently last Thursday.
[end of letter]
That looks fairly consistent to me.