What Kind of Veep Would Lieberman Have Been?

21.04.2008

Yesterday's NYT had an interesting counterfactual article speculating on the potential dysfunctionality of a Gore administration had Gore won in 2000 and Lieberman became veep:

Not only have Mr. Gore and Mr. Lieberman staked out diametrically opposite positions on the Iraq war, Mr. Gore went so far as to endorse one of Mr. Lieberman’s presidential rivals in 2004, Howard Dean, largely because of his opposition to the invasion. Mr. Lieberman is campaigning for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona.
The two men barely speak.
As Mr. Gore steadily migrated leftward from his roots as a hawkish, centrist New Democrat, Mr. Lieberman lurched to the right, so much so that he now makes common cause with Republicans, at least on the war.

My hunch is that Lieberman would be a very different politicain today--one much closer to the Lieberman of eight years ago--had Gore won in 2000. In other words, Lieberman would have been a fine veep. That's because I think much of Lieberman's lurch rightward has been driven less by political convictions than by the bitterness he feels toward Democratic voters over how they treated him after the 2000 defeat.

First, they overwhelmingly rejected him during his 2004 presidential bid. Then they rejected him during his 2006 Senate race. While Lieberman has long been a vocal proponent of the war--and it was this fact that caused Democratic voters to reject him--he didn't really start drifting into wing-nut territory until after those two defeats. Call it a particularly twisted coping mechanism, but I think Lieberman has rationalized these rejections by subscribing to the most ridiculous right-wing caricatures of Democratic voters as being nothing more than surrender monkeys and elitists and Marxists. He's also dug in his feet on Iraq. In other words, he thinks it's them, not him.

But had Gore won in 2000 and had Lieberman set up shop at the Naval Observatory, I think he'd probably be a Democrat in good standing today. And, if Gore had had a successful two terms, I don't think it's inconceivable that Lieberman would currently be running for president on the Democratic ticket as Gore's heir, instead of reprising the Zell Miller role for the GOP. But for a few hanging chads in Florida. . . .

--Jason Zengerle

Posted: Monday, April 21, 2008 10:35 AM with 5 comment(s)

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blackton said:

And, of course, there would have been no Iraq war at all. Maybe Joe would have pushed for it had he become President (from a purely liberal view of ridding the world of a maniancal tyrant)

April 21, 2008 11:18 AM

Rhubarbs said:

Nah. Gore would have dumped Lieberman -- er, I mean, "promoted" him to a cabinet post (UN ambassador) -- in favor of a more credible heir-apparent in 2004. His "debate" with Dick Cheney in 2000 convinced me at the time that Lieberman's vice presidency was a John Tyler or Andrew Johnson disaster in the making. I can't imagine that victory in the election would have much improved the apparently fraying relationship between Gore and Joementum, especially with a GOP Congress and the militarism of the immediate post-9/11 years.

April 21, 2008 11:31 AM

roidubouloi said:

Lieberman set off the chain of events first by dissing Clinton in the Senate and then by undermining the fight over the Florida ballot by publicly calling for it to end. The Republicans understood perfectly well that there was first and foremost a PR battle that would shape the legal battle. Lieberman as all too ready even then to do their dirty work.

I think it is mostly do to his sense or self-righteous grandiosity. He desperately wants to believe that he is someone uniquely willing to state painful truths out loud. It is a form of political narcissism that had led him into increasingly bizarre behavior in order to give content to this self-narrative.

We have three great narcissists on the political stage today: Nader, Lieberman, and Hillary Clinton. All are doing their share to defeat the Democratic party in November in order to add to their own sense of importance.

April 21, 2008 11:34 AM

teplukhin2you said:

Sounds convincing to me. Lieberman, like his Firedoggie and other fanatical antiwar opponents, is allowing his passions on one issue to trump good sense and a view of the whole.

The irony is that most of the nation doesn't share in this passion and would like to see a sensible middle road worked out on this issue where neither "victory" nor immediate withdrawal are possible.

April 21, 2008 11:45 AM

davidlheber said:

Lieberman and Mc Cain honest ,committed, and certainly both ethical beyond reproach. What turned the Democratic party in to a mob of whiners,defeatists, and self hating nihilists.

April 21, 2008 4:48 PM