I just got an event press release from AEI for a foreign-policy thing they’re hosting next week, and I took a look at the panelists:

Panelists:
Jon Alterman, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Reuel Marc Gerecht, AEI
Martin Indyk, Brookings Institution
Vance Serchuk, Office of Senator Joseph Lieberman

I had no idea Lieberman hired Serchuk, who until recently was an AEI research fellow. Let me say flat out that while I haven’t read the entirety of Serchuk’s work, I recall trading emails with him years ago and found him to be intelligent, rigorous and non-doctrinaire — in other words, precisely what you’d want from an ideological sparring partner. He also focused on Afghanistan when very few people, liberal or conservative, bothered to devote any critical thinking to an important theater of war. So I don’t mean to imply that Lieberman hired a crazy, because he didn’t. If you’re a neocon, you’d want someone like Serchuk on your team. But I suppose I remain somewhat surprised that Lieberman has embraced AEI has much as this hire suggests. Perhaps that’s naive.