The Myth Of The Bipartisan Ticket

You can try to pick out particular policies where McCain is an independent maverick or Obama represents unity and reaching across the aisle, but in general, this is a pretty simple election with very stark contrasts between the two candidates on virtually everything. As much as the press wants to tantalize with talk of unity tickets, be it Lieberman on the McCain side or Hagel on the Obama side, there is no way that this could happen in the real world because it would muddle the message of both campaigns.

Lieberman, of course, is a slightly better bet, since he's completely divorced himself from the party on foreign policy and has basically taken a position to the right of the neocons, so he could more easily what few differences remain on domestic policy. Fortunately, the Obama campaign is ready to pin this label on him immediately and take out any benefit from the supposedly "bipartisan" ticket.

I have to admit, I haven't read the whole piece because what dawned on me about two paragraphs into the piece is that Joe Lieberman would be a fabulous secretary of state for John McCain for one reason and one reason only. What Joe Lieberman proposes and what John McCain proposes is another four years of George Bush's foreign policy. We talked about how concerned we are and rightly so about Iran but what we have done is strengthen Iran by invading Iraq in a horrible, misguided war that Joe Lieberman signed off on, that John McCain signed off on, and that George Bush was happy to wage. That’s not kind of foreign policy we need, it’s not what’s going to make us safer.

Ouch. Maybe that's why Lieberman wasn't invited to the barbecue.