LA LA LA WE'RE NOT LISTENING

Joe Lieberman has a brilliant idea:

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman ... today called on the White House and congressional leaders to form a special "war cabinet" to provide advice and direction for the war effort.

The Connecticut Democrat's "Bipartisan Victory in Iraq Administrative Group," designed to take some of the political edge off the war debate, would be modeled after similar panels during the Vietnam War and World War II....

Lieberman said he had not yet figured out details of how his cabinet would work. It would probably meet weekly and discuss conditions in Iraq, and perhaps recommend policy....

Yes, it's just brilliant -- because, as we know, this administration really, really values fresh input:

...[Representative John Murtha] said ... the Bush administration ignored his efforts to open private discussions on devising a bipartisan course change.

A letter on Iraq that Mr. Murtha said he sent to Mr. Bush last year did not get a reply until five months later, and then from a underling at the Pentagon, he complained.

"I deserve more respect than that," he said....

--New York Times, 11/22/05

[Brent] Scowcroft's colleagues told me that he would have preferred to deliver his analysis privately to the White House. But Scowcroft, the apotheosis of a Washington insider, was by then definitively on the outside, and there was no one in the White House who would listen to him....

According to friends, Scowcroft was consulted more frequently by the Clinton White House than he has been by George W. Bush's....

Scowcroft was appointed chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in the first term, but he was not consulted on plans for Iraq. "He's not the only person to be frozen out," one colleague of Scowcroft's from the first Bush Administration told me -- a clear reference to James Baker and a number of other officials....

--New Yorker, 10/31/05

President Bush feels betrayed by several of his most senior aides and advisors and has severely restricted access to the Oval Office, administration sources say.

...The sources said Mr. Bush maintains daily contact with only four people: first lady Laura Bush, his mother, Barbara Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes. The sources also say that Mr. Bush has stopped talking with his father, except on family occasions....

--Insight on the News, 11/15/05

Yeah, Bush loves this kind of thing. Thanks, Joe! Don't call the White House about this -- the White House'll call you!

(Via Memeorandum.)

****

You know, after a typical rock show, the members of the band go back to the hotel with young ladies whose role bears more than a passing resemblance to Joe Lieberman's role with respect to the White House. Like those young ladies, Lieberman thinks the Bushies actually like him; in fact, they merely crave the services he can provide (Bushies have a fetish for turncoat Democrats -- see Zell Miller, Ron Silver, Ed Koch, etc.). Lieberman's like the protagonist of the old Carpenters song "Superstar" (written by rocker Leon Russell and alternately titled "Groupie"): Don't you remember you told me you loved me, baby? I don't know if I believe the rumor that Lieberman might replace Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense, but even if it happens, Lieberman will only be there to be a yes-man and a Democratic fig leaf -- he won't be part of the inner decision-making circle. Why marry the bipartisan cow when you can get the milk for free?