People are starting to think about who will follow George W. Bush as president and discussing the possibility of Hilary Rodham Clinton beating Rudy Giuliani in an election. As they paint what they imagine November 2008 could bring, they tend to forget the only man who legislates as if he is going to examine his own conscience each November:
Joseph Lieberman, Connecticut’s newfound hero.
There are plenty of reasons to discount a Lieberman bid for higher office. He’s lost two national elections – his 2000 bid for the vice presidency and short-lived presidential primary bid in 2004 – and last summer, was rejected by his own party in the Democratic Senate primary. Add all that together, and he’s the only prominent politician in the country who has lost three elections in six years and still has a job. Despite a six-year slump, he is not politically dead.
Joe came back charging.
In American politics where everyone either hates the left or hates the right, why not pick the guy in the middle? Lieberman’s morals-over-politics attitude makes him the great compromise found at the heart and center of the political spectrum.
Lieberman has always been a free-thinker, with his own political views, and this would cause many Democrats who count on his support of their issues have a “say-it-ain’t-so-Joe” attitude.
He, like Bill Clinton, was a chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, a non-profit organization established as a way for Democrats to move from the left of the political spectrum more towards the center, after the Reagan era brought a rise to conservative politics.
Although he was a strong supporter of Clinton and holds many of the same views as the former president, he was one of the first Democrats to call for an investigation after the Lewinsky scandal. This was just the first of many situations in which Lieberman would put his morals ahead of his political views.
Lieberman’s religion has also played a big role in his life. He is an Orthodox Jew and became the first Jewish vice presidential candidate. Lieberman has said that there is room for faith in public life.
Throughout the 2006 campaign, I thought about John F. Kennedy’s Pulitzer Prize winning book “Profiles in Courage.” In the book, Kennedy discusses eight U.S. Senators some of whom eventually lost their seats.
Like those great senators, Lieberman has shown his moral courage. He is still a power-brokering political gem.
He has declared himself as in Independent Democrat, which has upset many in the Democratic establishment.
But Lieberman’s purity has found him some prominent supporters from the conservative side, including Giuliani, current New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Connecticut Congressman Chris Shays.
In an age when Americans are fed up with the everyday scandal-ridden politician, and with support on both sides, Lieberman is no longer a Joe-Schmoe: look for him to be the man standing in the center of the ring of this leftist-rightist 2008 steel cage match.
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