Deck the Halls With Joseph Lieberman David Brooks: Tis the season for holiday parties, which means I'm spending a lot of time with the Beltway establishment. Let me tell you, you people who live outside the beltway are completely out of touch. We in the D.C. establishment are a wonderful group of really smart and intelligent people and if you guys don't let us micromanage your affairs, you don't deserve the happiness and wealth we could provide. Gail Collins: Do I hear a note of sarcasm? Yes, what a really happy holiday this would be if only the government had not barged in with those intrusive bailouts and saved the banking system. Interference from Washington is a terrible burden to us all, from the simple farmer who yearns to be freed from oppressive crop supports to the elderly who pray to be released from the chains of Social Security. David Brooks: The only problem with us inside the Beltway types is a certain tendency toward a herd mentality. For example, this year I'm especially lamenting the fact that we have a near one-party press corps. All my conversations are the same: Haven't Obama's speeches been great? Isn't Sarah Palin an atrocity? Why don't they just pass health care already? I agree with some of this, but it's still boring to be part of the same blah, blah, blah. Gail Collins: Well, the good thing about New York is that only half the conversation at any party is about politics. The other half is shop talk, which I really do like, particularly when it's not my shop and I get to hear gossip about which restaurant is closing next or who's sleeping with who in the world of post-post Freudian therapy. David Brooks: The big theme of holiday conversation is what an atrocity Joe Lieberman is. Everybody agrees apparently. Most people who agree couldn't even tell you what the Medicare buy-in is or what his position on health care reform is. They just know that in polite society it is imperative to detest old Joe. Gail Collins: David, excuse me! I have been making this point for several years now. In fact I believe I announced in 2007 that Joe Lieberman was responsible for everything terrible that's happened to the world since 1999. David Brooks: As a matter of fact, I like Lieberman enormously. I know we disagree on this. I think he is performing a valuable national service. First, he is representing the American people. Their No. 1 one concern with health care is cost control. He's standing up for that. Gail Collins: Joe Lieberman is not representing anybody but Joe Lieberman. I've thought that ever since his last election, when he got bounced by the Democrats and ran as the nominee of the Connecticut for Lieberman Party. Why wasn't it Lieberman for Connecticut? Because it's got to be all about Joe, that's why. David Brooks: ... As I was saying, second, he's standing in the way of a stupid late minute health care deal nobody understands. Nobody in the Senate knows how the Medicare buy-in would work. It's insane politically because it was an attempt to win over moderates by offering something further to the left than the original proposal. Third, there is no way it would lead to cost control, given the realities of the Medicare payment system, which rewards volume and has a history of rising costs. Health care reform has become quite unpopular. Somewhere around 38 percent of the country supports it and 58 percent of the country opposes, if you average the various polls. Lieberman is actually asking questions, and representing in public the views other senators hold in private, views they don't air because they're not in a position to take the heat. Gail Collins: If Lieberman actually cared about health costs, why isn't he talking about things that would actually bring costs down? You and I have been over this before. The Senate bill creates a special panel of experts that would have the power to actually enforce cost savings on Medicare, but as currently written, the panel wouldn't have the power to really do anything except under the most extreme circumstances. Tightening that up would make way, way more difference than getting rid of the public option. Which actually would save money, by the way. David Brooks: I'm not totally with Lieberman. I think he's too concerned with the public option, which won't make a big difference either way. I think he should be focusing his energy on promoting the kind of amendments Susan Collins and Mark Warner are pushing, which might actually lead to bigger cost control. Still, at least he's thinking about cost. At least he knows how to play the Senate game and is willing to brave the scorn of this season's party-goers. Gail Collins: Not if the parties under consideration are in Hartford, at the insurance companies. David Brooks: Anyway, it makes for conversational fodder around this year's secular holiday festivals. Gail Collins: Happy Holidays, David. This is our last conversation this year, so here's to many more in 2010.