There’s a lot of discussion about whether Joe Lieberman should retain his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. In resolving the question, Senate Democrats might swallow their institutional pride and follow the precedent of the House, placing the matter before the entire caucus for a vote.

The seniority system determined congressional chairmanships for most of the 20th century, but in the early 1970s, as part of the Watergate era reforms, both chambers allowed secret ballot, party caucus votes to determine chairmanships. The new system never really took root in the Senate: apart from pushing aside chairs for reasons of age or infirmity (Strom Thurmond, Robert Byrd), the upper chamber has honored the seniority system. In the House, however, the changes were instantaneous: in 1974, House Democrats unseated Armed Services Committee chairman F. Edward Hébert, since the Louisiana Democrat had grown out of step with majority opinion in the caucus on national security powers. Hébert stayed on the committee and in the caucus: he simply lost his chairmanship.

This system worked remained in place and worked relatively well for the next two decades, until Newt Gingrich elected to consolidate in the Speaker’s office the power to name committee chairs.

Lieberman, it would seem, is a perfect candidate for the Hébert precedent. He chairs a committee with, potentially, extraordinary oversight powers: it was the base for Joe McCarthy’s inquiries in the early 1950s, for example. (For those with JSTOR access, I have an article on the committee and Cold War foreign policy in Political Science Quarterly 113 (1998): 645-671.) Yet over the last four years, under the leadership of Lieberman and Maine senator Susan Collins, the committee has been all but inert. That’s no surprise, since both Lieberman and Collins seemed to have little desire to exercise oversight of the Bush administration.

But would such passivity remain in place for the next four years? Lieberman, after all, has already publicly claimed that Obama, at an unspecified time in his career, failed to put “country first.” He has additionally suggested that asking whether Obama harbors Marxist tendencies is a “good question.” And he defended the Ayers and Wright attacks against Obama during the campaign.

The idea that the Democrats could give a senator with such views carte blanche to investigate the Obama administration is hard to believe. But, at the very least, if they do so, they should put the full caucus on record in favor of the decision.