Joe Lieberman has died. The obituaries describe a steadfast public servant and they may be correct. But Lieberman is also an emblem. More so than the self-indulgent Bill Clinton or the self-adoring Barack Obama, Lieberman typified the baby boomer in power. Scholarship boy; Vietnam War deferment; local politics; attorney general; senator, from the richest state in the Republic. Starting out as a run-of-the-mill Northern liberal, Lieberman moved to the Right in the Reagan and Bush years, embellishing that shift with militant piety and an easy relationship with power. Aside from his near-miss at the vice presidency, Lieberman will be remembered as the loudest booster of that rather un-American creation, the Department of Homeland Security, which is suitably headquartered in a former insane asylum that was once home to a caged Ezra Pound. |