Commentary –

Lieberman’s Next Miracle

May Be Sane Liberalism

 By Chris Powell

As they emerged from their house in New Haven to acknowledge his selection as the Democratic nominee for vice president, Joe and Hadassah Lieberman made sure to touch the mezuzah on the door for luck.

“Miracles happen,” the first Jewish nominee for nationwide office said with gratitude and emotion. But judging from the national reaction, Al Gore’s choice of Lieberman was less a miracle than simply the right thing; Lieberman seems to have been the best of the options both for his own qualities and for the political strength he might bring to the ticket. So what is miraculous may be less his being chosen than how he got into consideration.

In fact there are two miracles there, and they took place years ago.

The first was Lieberman’s upsetting the majority leader of the state Senate, Edward L. Marcus, now Democratic state chairman, in the Democratic primary in their New Haven district in 1970. Lieberman was just out of law school and his only political experience was his work in anti-war campaigns in the Democratic Party in 1968 and 1970. (Interestingly, Marcus then, like Lieberman now, was seeking two offices simultaneously, re-election to the state Senate as well as nomination to the US Senate, but lost both.) Lieberman quickly went on to become Senate majority leader himself, and then Connecticut’s attorney general, after somehow losing an election for the US House in what had been and soon again would be a safely Democratic district.

The second miracle was Lieberman’s upsetting Republican Sen. Lowell P. Weicker, Jr, in 1988. Eighteen years of Weicker’s insufferable bluster played badly against Lieberman’s thoughtfulness, but Lieberman would not have won without being something more (or less) than the nice guy known by his recent admirers outside Connecticut. That is, he broadcast attack ads about his opponent’s lapses in ethics. And when Lieberman became a national sensation in 1998 as the first Democratic senator to condemn President Clinton for his affair with a White House intern, some wondered if Lieberman wasn’t positioning himself for exactly what has just fallen to him.

Lieberman’s religion is the sensation and the concern now, but it may be old hat by November. It actually may have been an asset when he defeated Weicker. Lieberman has recalled that he began to think he might win in 1988 when then-state Sen. Cornelius P. O’Leary of Windsor Locks remarked that his mother, an Italian Catholic, had noticed Lieberman’s abstention from campaigning on the Jewish Sabbath and expressed admiration for his faith. His declining to be completely self-serving may again put him ahead of other politicians at least one day a week and win him more votes than it costs him.

No doubt there are bigots who will vote against Lieberman. But just as many people may vote for him in the hope of ratifying American pluralism, much as the polls say retired Gen. Colin Powell might be the first black president whenever he wanted to be. In any case for years now the Christian right has admired Lieberman for his criticism of the junk culture, and there were no retractions of that admiration upon his selection for vice president.

Indeed, it was hard to find any criticism of Lieberman at all; even many Republicans praised him. While the rating groups give him a solidly liberal voting record, conservatives overlook it, utterly smitten by his conceding them a debating point occasionally and enjoying their company. The only people sore at him are on the Democratic Party’s hard left, continuing to confuse his deploring the junk culture with the threat of censorship and resenting his not being an appeaser (he voted for the war against Iraq) and a stooge of the teacher unions (he favors voucher experiments).

As much as Lieberman seems to be a brilliant choice for vice president in theory, practice still may be something else. He is not a great orator or campaigner, and three months is not a long time for him to impress his personal virtues on a national audience that doesn’t know him. And though he accepted Gore’s invitation with joy, Lieberman now will find himself playing a role he has never played before: loyal subordinate. After all, as Gore, after eight years in the vice presidency, may know only too well, Lieberman is needed as the vice presidential nominee to provide the appearance of independence and integrity, not necessarily to put that independence and integrity into action at Gore’s expense as he did in 1998 with Clinton.

But duty to one’s country and party is compelling, as is a chance to make this kind of history. Miracles do happen, and Lieberman’s next one may be to prove to the country, as he has proven to Connecticut, that it is still possible to be liberal on the things that count, and sane.

(Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.)