Last Democratic to win Vice-Presidency endorses McCain

Mench-in-chief Joe Lieberman endorses John McCain

I hope that got your attention. Joe Lieberman gets a lot of press these days as a conservative. He isn’t one. Check out his voting record. Joe Lieberman is a bona fide liberal, a lifelong Democrat. But something changed him. He won the popular vote in 2000 for the Vice-Presidency. Yes, he was the person in America that Nobel Prize, Inconvenient Truth declaring, Internet inventing Al Gore selected as his running mate. Lieberman was from Connecticut. He couldn’t bring a big state. He didn’t have a national constituency and except for political junkies like me, most people outside the beltway didn’t know who he was. The reason he was chosen was because he was good. He was the one Gore knew could be relied on. Other than marrying Tipper, it may have been the only other good move Gore ever made. How right Gore was–and how little Gore knew just how much Lieberman could be counted on.

Following their popular vote victory/electoral college defeat, no one could have blamed Gore-Lieberman for being Sore-Loserman (remember the bumper stickers?). And that is just exactly what Al Gore has done for eight years. He’s gotten on with his life, done some good, told some tall tales and spent a lot of time bad mouthing the Bush Administration–sometimes justifiably, sometimes ridiculously, always self-serving.

What did Lieberman do? He watched Bush and Cheney at 911 and realized it could have been, would have been, should have been him in the bunker and Gore being flied all over. On the National Day of Prayer in the wake of 911, Lieberman hugged Bush at the National Cathedral, demonstrating unity and empathy and statesmanship.

Whatever you think of the war, Lieberman does not fit into the two categories of fault I understand. One category are people who jumped to war or cherry picked Intel. The other are spineless Democrats who voted in favor of the war even though they were against it. Lieberman honestly believed it was the right thing to do. His consistency in seeing the matter through is based on first hand experiences he has had on the Senate Foreign Relations ommittee and numerous trips to Iraq. He’s had the candor to disagree with the Bush Administration when he needed to, the courage to agree with Bush when saw fit, ran for president against the Bush Administration in 2004 to no avail and was resilient enough to retain his Senate seat in 2006, beating a right winger turned anti-war left winger challenger Ned Lamont and the betrayal of his fair weathered Democratic friends.

For the record, of the current Democratic field for President, Biden is the only one who stuck with Lieberman in 2006. And if you are thinking that Lieberman should have endorsed a Democrat for President in 2008, keep this in mind: not one of them asked for his endorsement. McCain did. Its always nice to be asked.

Lieberman’s endorsement of McCain is a great thing. It may be more symbolic than translating any real value in terms of votes. Lieberman and McCain would each tend to be respected by the New Hampshire brand of independent voters except that those folks also tend to be anti-war.

Lieberman and McCain are both statesman. They have each been betrayed by their own party. That’s because they put country and integrity over partisan loyalty.