Orthodox Democrat: The fall of Joe Lieberman - political decisions of Senator Joe Lieberman

National Review, Dec 31, 2000 by Jay Nordlinger

In another move apparently intended to shore up the black vote, Lieberman did what no major or respectable politician had done before: propose to meet with Louis Farrakhan, the demagogue and hater who has a larger following than most Americans suppose. About Lieberman, Farrakhan had worried, "Would he be more faithful to the Constitution of the United States than to the ties that any Jewish person would have to the State of Israel?" (That's our Louis: always looking out for the Constitution.) On American Urban Radio, Lieberman said of Farrakhan: "I have respect for him." Pressed to say what that respect was based on, Lieberman mentioned Farrakhan's voter-registration activities-and thereby let the cat out of the bag.

On to Social Security: Here Lieberman performed another Mao-style self-denunciation, writing what the campaign labeled an "Op-Ed piece" (never published) entitled "My Private Journey Away from Privatization." On August 13, parroting language that even Gore had abandoned, Lieberman denounced the Bush plan-which was more cautious than the program that he himself had originally endorsed-as a "risky scheme."

Then there was the appeasement of another vital Democratic constituency: Hollywood. Lieberman pretended that he had never suggested government action against entertainment-industry malefactors-that he had only wanted to discomfit them. But in 1999, he had said, "We're coming dangerously close . . . , much as we prize our liberties, to the point where they're going to invite legal restrictions on their freedom because they are beginning to yell 'Fire!' in a crowded theater . . . , and they're going to be held accountable." At a Hollywood fundraiser on September 18, 2000, Lieberman said to the glitterati, "I promise you this: that we will never, never put the government in the position of telling you by law, through law, what to make. We will noodge you, but we will never become censors." Then, on October 5, in his vice-presidential debate versus Dick Cheney, Lieberman spoke of a Federal Trade Commission report alleging that Hollywood was marketing "adult rated" materials to children. "When that report came out," said Lieberman, "Al Gore and I said to the entertainment industry, 'Stop it.' And if you don't stop it in six months, we're going to ask the Federal Trade Commission to take action against you."

This is noodging?

As the general election wore on, Lieberman did a lot more than discard his positions and arguments for the good of the cause-he cut Republicans up. He led the effort to paint Bush's Texas as a Third World hellhole, where children (with distended bellies? too weak to bat away flies?) rotted uninsured. He caricatured Bush and Cheney as a pair of Big Oil fat cats. He accused them of "running down the military" because they criticized the Clinton administration's handling of it. He said that their plan to skip a generation of military technology-so as to leap ahead, the Bushies maintained-would "cripple our readiness." He said that their proposal to recall U.S. troops from the Balkans would "break up the NATO alliance." And here is a real beauty: Bush and Cheney had suggested opening about 8 percent of the (gigantic) Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. So Lieberman charged that this "would cause irreversible damage to one of God's most awesome creations." When Lieberman drags God into it, we can bet that he is at his cheapest.