A reassessment of Joe Lieberman and the nature of virtue in 2024

 Joe Lieberman died this week, and as I think through his place in modern American politics, I struggle through my assessment of him.  I never had a high opinion of him, but generally speaking, I judge most politicians harshly.  Time, though, changes how we view people and events.  I still cannot say that I find Lieberman virtuous, but I can at least seek a more sympathetic reading.  Don't look for condemnation.  You may find it anyway, but you don't seek it, and 2024 puts someone like Lieberman in a different perspective.

Why?  Because everyone else in American politics is now bonkers.

Blah-blah, polarization, blah-blah extremism, OMG, hair-on-fire, yadda-yadda, look at my virtue, look at my virtue, tap tap, dance the dance of the self-righteous, sanctimonious centrist.

Get over yourself.  (Myself?)  Also, maybe I should work out a tune to go with that.  It's kind of catchy, no?

Anyway, the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives started drifting leftward in the 1960s, and the Republican caucus started drifting rightward in the 1970s.  By the 1990s, the center was looking a little thin, and I don't really remember when the anorexic look was "in," and it should never be "in," eat something for fuck's sake, healthy diet, healthy exercise, no drugs, but maybe the timing works here, dunno, don't remember, don't really care.  Point being, by the 1990s, we Political Scientists (OK, late 90s, I was a mere grad student, but still) were starting to whine about "polarization."  Then, by the oughts, it was starting to get kind of icky.  And the self-styled, self-righteous, fart-smelling centrists started running tubes from their recta to their noses to ensure that they never missed any flatus.

I started this post with the notion that I would be somber and dignified this morning.  So much for that.

Regardless, welcome to 2024.  The right is so far right as to reject capitalism in favor of mercantilist lunacy and anti-democratic strongman antics.  The left has decided that if they are going to be called "socialist," they may as well become socialist, while embracing identitarian caricatures and siding with terrorists who actually, literally have it in their charter to kill all the Jews.  Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rashida Tlaib are the perfect demonstrations of "the horseshoe theory," once a joke, now true.

Point being, modern American politics have gone batty on both ends.  How, then, do I think of self-righteous centrism in 2024?

Having posted recently about Aristotle, I can read Lieberman at least somewhat sympathetically.  In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle describes virtue as the golden mean between opposed vices.  Courage is the golden mean between cowardice and rashness, for example.  As I wrote in my discussion of Aristotle, I do think that he engages in some sophistry, starting with a virtue and then searching for vices to stick on each end to maintain the model, and that's kind of bullshit.  Yet right now, we do have two extreme ends, and I dislike them both.

One can see, in some sense, the Aristotelean appeal of asserting a golden mean, and I used that analogy, trying to give Aristotle a little more credit for median voter politics, which we normally trace from Hotelling, through Downs and Black to wastes of paper such as I have peddled.

The Democrats and the Republicans are insane.  I cannot vote for either Biden or Trump.  I'll probably write in Marcus Aurelius or Cato the Younger, or someone like that.  If you are going to cast a protest vote, cast a good one.

Does it follow, though, that there is a golden mean, and that the Lieberman approach is the right one?

Because Joe Lieberman really did construct his policy positions through the search for a golden mean, or the spatial median, or whichever analogy we choose.

Consider his negotiations on Obamacare, if you remember that far back.  The Senate had 60 Democrats, so every one was pivotal.  Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu were negotiating for state-level benefits, for Nebraska and Louisiana, respectively.  Once they got those benefits inserted into the bill on the Senate side, they were on board, and the provisions got cool nicknames.  The Cornhusker Kickback and the Louisiana Purchase.

What did Lieberman want?  He did not know.  He knew that he didn't want to say yes without conditions, but he couldn't figure out what the conditions should be, because he was not thinking in terms of policy principles.  First principles, one might say.  In the past, for example, he had advocated lowering the age of Medicare eligibility.  Someone floated the idea to him, and he said yes.  Then, the idea floated around, and a very creepy guy named Anthony Weiner loved it.

Then-Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) was, at the time, a lefty firebrand and a favorite on the lefty media circuit.  When Lieberman heard that Weiner liked the idea, he backed away from his own policy because Weiner's agreement meant that it wasn't an Aristotelean golden mean, or a Downsian median, or however we conceive of it.  Let's go Downs.  I'm a proper Political Scientist in this paragraph.  I'll go back to moral philosophy later, and we'll bring back the Walkin' Dude.

Wait...

Anyway, point being, Lieberman was not thinking about policy in terms of objectives or the design of institutions.  It was about searching for the middle, and using that search as his principle.  If Weiner agreed, it was too far left, so he needed to recalibrate.

And generally speaking, I don't want to be near Anthony Weiner.  The post-script is that he got caught having sent some creepy pics, his wife divorced him, and that would have been the end, except that his wife was an assistant to Hillary Clinton, and the computer that got found by the Feds at the end of the 2016 campaign, leading to the "reopening" of the email investigation was... Anthony Weiner's, or at least, shared with him, hence the possibility of a security leak.

So, that's the guy.  Do not do a Google image search of Anthony Weiner.  If you do, you've been warned.  I warned you.

Anyway, I was saying something about Joe Lieberman, and somehow this turned into creepy pictures, the 2016 campaign, Jim Comey, and let's get back to Lieberman.  He never thought in terms of principles.  He thought in terms of distance from the extremes, which is a principle of a sort, but back-asswards, even from Aristotle's perspective.  I guess I'm on an Aristotle kick right now.  My big problem with Nicomachean Ethics was that Aristotle began with his assertion of a virtue-- magnificence, say-- and then tried to figure out how to construct extremes around it to maintain the concept of the golden mean.  He didn't look at any set of extremes, split the difference, and define that as virtue.  Those two approaches work in opposite directions.

Lieberman took that latter approach, more consistent with spatial theory, which is really where median voter politics differs from the golden mean concept anyway.  Yet if Party A is bonkers and Party B is bonkers, does it logically follow that splitting the difference gives you a good policy?  Or I'll go you one better-- does it work as a first principle that both parties are always and forever bonkers?

What if Party A has it right on Issue 1 and Party B has it right on Issue 2, but everyone is bonkers on some subset of issues because each party decided to lose precisely half its marbles?  Should you follow the golden mean principle, or the Downsian principle, which amount to the same thing anyway, if for different reasons?

That was the flaw in Lieberman's reasoning.  He never specified a goal, reasoned from first principles regarding a policy design that would achieve it, calibrated based on uncertainty, or generally speaking, did the technocratic thing I just described.  He never seemed to have a guiding ideology of first principles at all.  He seemed to think that splitting the difference was, itself, a first principle, and let us consider it.

In spatial theory terms, there are some nice, mathematical properties to the location of the median, although as an Aristotelean approach, as I said, it is back-asswards.  Aristotle began with the virtue, and then reverse-engineered the vices around it to maintain the model of the golden mean, but that meant starting with the virtue as a first principle.  Lieberman really was more Downs than Aristotle.  Either way, though, consider the alternative.

I have not suddenly decided that Lieberman was right to refuse to think in terms of first principles, but as critical as I have been of his approach to politics, both during his political career and now, would I take Lieberman over the wingnuts and moonbats of 2024?

Alas, yes, and that is what I mean by time providing a different perspective.  The 2020s are an era of hyperpolarization in its most noxious form.  There is a difference between principled centrism and unprincipled centrism, but I'd take even an unprincipled centrist over the current crop.

Let me unpack that.

Principled centrism means one of two things.  It can mean something like the Aristotelean golden mean, or similarly, using first principles to arrive at a policy preference at the middle of the left-right dimension.  For example, one might use economic models to decide that the optimal tax rate is x, where x is the midpoint between the rates favored by the Democratic and Republican Parties.  That would be principled centrism.

Then, there is unprincipled centrism.  Lieberman was an unprincipled centrist.  His goal was to be in the middle, based on the premise that the Democrats and the Republicans must axiomatically be symmetrically wrong, and by splitting the difference, he would look holier-than-thou.  That's unprincipled centrism, clearly visible in his reversal on lowering the age of Medicare eligibility during the Obamacare debate.

Take whatever position you wish on Obamacare.  I consider it fundamentally debatable.  But Lieberman's position was fundamentally unprincipled.

If you are a principled centrist, then we can have a good faith discussion of policy and principle.  If you are an unprincipled centrist, then you cannot have a good faith discussion with anyone, because your only goal is to position yourself between, which means you cannot agree with anyone, unless that person is also somewhere in the middle.

It's a little douchey.

Yet by 2024 standards, a little douchey is practically saintly, and that's my point.  By today's standards, Joe Lieberman's smug, unprincipled centrism comes across as charming, quaint, and statesmanlike.  Have I decided that I actually like him?  No, but it's kind of like that vaguely annoying pop band from your childhood that sounds nowhere near as annoying compared to the shit being cranked out by the pop music industry today.

Point being, if Lieberman were alive (roughly the age of the oldsters on the ballot), I'd draft him, campaign for him enthusiastically, vote for him semi-contentedly, and recognize that all things considered, it could have been a lot worse, as we now know, because it is a lot worse.

Thanks, Father Time, for showing us how to appreciate things by making everything shittier.  A lesson is a lesson, I suppose.  Now I'm going to go search "greatest hits of the 80s" and torture myself for the sake of appreciating the pre-autotune era.

No.  No, I won't do that to myself.  It's not worth it.  I have too much to live for.

Inclined, "Somewhere In The Middle," from Bright New Day.  It was either this, or Living Colour's "Middle Man," which has the virtue of being from a semi-famous band from my youth, except that Living Colour does not fit the bill from that prior reference.  Living Colour was always fucking awesome.  So, here's something a little more obscure.  Fun fact:  Miles Tackett is the son of Fred Tackett, from Little Feat.