Aha! Lieberman Plot Thickens

Now that Bob Woodward’s latest book, “State of Denial”, can be ordered on the ‘Net, he’s making the talk show rounds. Yesterday he was on “60 Minutes” and tonight he’ll be on Larry King. The chief topic, is that Woodward no longer is trying to maintain a reporter’s objectivity about the Bush administration. In fact, early reviews of his book (like Michiko Kakutani’s in the New York Times on September 30) show Woodward to be decidedly anti-Bush. This morning, the Washington Post published an article by Woodward titled “Should He Stay?” It speaks to the problem of Donald Rumsfeld’s thorny tenure as Secretary of Defense and the fact that right after Bush was re-elected in 2004, the question of whether Rumsfeld should be ousted was very much on the minds of the entire Bush administration. Woodward says, “The biggest question mark was Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld: After President Bush won reelection in 2004, White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. got out an 8 1/2-by-11 spiral notebook, half an inch thick, with a blue cover. He called it his "hit-by-the-bus" book -- handy in case someone in the administration suddenly had to be replaced… Card had the names of 11 possible Rumsfeld replacements in his "hit-by-the-bus" book, among them Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), who had been Al Gore's vice presidential running mate in 2000 and was a staunch defender of the Iraq war, and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).” Well, well, well. So Lieberman had to know he was being considered as a Rumsfeld replacement all the way back to 2004. That does make the cheese more binding, as they say down South. And it certainly explains the kiss Lieberman planted on the Prez at the State of the Union Speech on February 2, 2005. It’s obvious now that Lieberman defected to the Republican side as soon as he was sure Bush would be president in 2004. “But Card thought the best replacement for Rumsfeld would be James A. Baker III,” Woodward says, “who had been White House chief of staff and Treasury secretary under President Ronald Reagan, then secretary of state and chief political adviser to the president's father.” In the end, Bush and Cheney decided not to oust Rumsfeld. “In mid-December 2004, the president made his final decision,” Woodward says. “Rumsfeld would stay, he indicated to Cheney and Card. He couldn't change Rumsfeld. That didn't mean he didn't want to, Card later said.” So did Lieberman opt to throw his whole political career as a moderate Democrat down the tubes, on the off chance he would be made Secretary of Defense when Rumsfeld was canned? Probably not. Rumsfeld has not been canned and from all indications, it looks like he won’t be. It may be that Lieberman is counting on McCain being elected president, at which time he will clinch the Cabinet position as Secretary of Defense. But what seems to have been going on is that Joseph Lieberman had been hankering to switch sides for years. And he has been wooing the right people in order to make it so. In any case, the defection has been accomplished and if Lieberman keeps his Senate seat as an Independent, he can solidify his position with the GOP until 2009. Of course it is devoutly to be hoped that he will lose the upcoming election. The sweetest upshot would be for the little putz to be shunned by both sides.