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I've been a supporter of the president-elect for the better part of a year now, and while I've always recognized a deep intellectualism and multilayered thoughtfulness in the man, it never fully occurred to me how he would use these strengths in a position of leadership. Until this week.
In sharp contrast to your behavior, President-elect Obama hasn't shown any predilection for pettiness or disloyalty, nor has he undermined his allies for the sake of political expedience. He's proved himself to be a man of great character. Of values. I don't need to remind anyone how he stood by Jeremiah Wright, for example, and at his own political peril when most would've tossed him overboard like political chum.
You, on the other hand, have shown an unapologetic contempt for the party that once nominated you for the vice presidency -- the party that welcomed you back to the fold even though you slipped through the system and defeated the fairly elected Democratic nominee, Ned Lamont, in 2006. You've betrayed your fellow liberals to settle a political score, Senator -- in order to exact some kind of ignoble payback against your former party, against your caucus and against the netroots for merely calling you out on your literal and figurative smooching of the president.
This is behavior President-elect Obama doesn't appear to be capable of. Because he's clearly better than you. In fact, it's not difficult to hypothesize that had you possessed a fraction of his political instincts or any small measure of his morality, you would absolutely not be in this position, Senator.
See, by allowing you to keep your precious chairmanship -- by letting you off the hook -- President-elect Obama, through his political bigness, punished you without punishing you. He beat you yesterday, Senator. He beat you because he let you be you, and underscored it with his demonstrably better angels and strength of character.
In the final analysis, the hard reality is that by not choosing retribution, he made you look...
...small.
And that, Senator, is good enough for me.
SOURCE:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/an-open-letter-to-joe-lie_b_145026.html |
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