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A Man For All Political Seasons
By Tim Siggia
January 14, 2003
All of you who have longed for a president from Connecticut, take heart: Senator Joseph "Sleepy Joe" Lieberman has officially tossed his hat into the presidential ring as of January 13, 2003. Never mind that, strictly speaking, we already have a president from Connecticut. George W. Bush was born in New Haven, though he is more immediately associated with Texas. The point is, Sleepy Joe can't possibly be considered from anywhere but Connecticut, and is now reported the favorite of the moderate wing of the Democratic Party. And if that last phrase sounds suspiciously like, "the integrationist wing of the Ku Klux Klan", all I can say is I'm not making this up: this is what's being reported by our fair and unbiased mainstream media.
Perhaps the mainstream media has it right. Those of us who have become familiar with Sleepy Joe over the years know he never seems quite so comfortable as when he is sitting on the fence. That weathervane beanie that cartoonist Bob Englehart loves to depict Gov. John Rowland as always wearing would fit Sleepy Joe very well. Whatever seems to be popular at the moment is what Sleepy Joe is for. He is indeed a man for all political seasons. And if it happens that after a seeming eternity of "maybe I will, and maybe I won't" that he always comes down on the liberal side of every issue.
Lieberman was once seen as, let's say, one of the not-so-liberal voices on the Democratic side of the Senate aisle. He once championed, for instance, and voted for, school vouchers. Then, when he became former vice president, Al Gore's running mate in 2000, he suddenly morphed into an ultra-liberal, to the point of flip-flopping on so many of his previous positions that even Connecticut voters, who were accustomed to this sort of thing from Sleepy Joe, weren't really sure who their junior senator really was. Now, once again, he is depicted as conservative, though on this one we must consider the source: Bob Englehart, whose own definition of "conservative" covers a pretty broad range. By Englehart's standards, if you're not a disciple of the late Abbie Hoffman, you're a conservative.
To get a real flavor of our will-o-the-wisp senator it is necessary, if somewhat distasteful for conservatives, to go back to eight-year presidency of our own Abbie Hoffman of the White House, Slick Willie Clinton. When Clinton announced his candidacy for president in 1992, Sleepy Joe, who had known Clinton at Yale, was the first U.S. Senator to endorse him. Later, when Clinton told us, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky," Lieberman's response was, "I believe him." Then, when the truth came out, Lieberman suddenly became The Conscience of the Senate, and stood up on the Senate floor to denounce his friend's behavior, though cleverly calling on his colleagues to censure the president -- a measure not provided for in the Constitution -- rather than impeach him. Finally, when Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives in 1999, Lieberman joined the rest of his Senate Democrats in a vote of "not guilty."
In 1988, Joe Lieberman was elected U.S. Senator from Connecticut mainly because his opponent, the incumbent "moderate" Lowell Weicker had veered so far to the left as to put himself beyond the pale even by Connecticut standards. And this, at last, might offer a clue as to why those who vote for Sleepy Joe do so: they vote for him not because of who his is, but rather, because of who he is not. Should he get his coveted nomination and become the Democratic candidate for President in 2004, those who vote for Sleepy Joe will vote for him because he isn't George W. Bush.
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