The New York Times speculates on what would have happened if Gore-Lieberman taken office in 2000:
Imagine for a moment the Supreme Court had gone the other way in Bush v. Gore in 2000. We would now be in year eight of the Gore-Lieberman administration. Well, maybe not the Lieberman part.
There’s nothing new about friction between a president and vice president (Franklin Roosevelt and Henry Wallace and Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey are but two examples) or between failed running mates (John F. Kerry and John Edwards are only the most recent). But rarely have two members of a presidential ticket gone in such starkly different directions as former Vice President Al Gore and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman. It is tempting, for fans of counterfactual history, to play out what kind of drama might have emerged in a White House under that ticket’s auspices.
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.
The major problem with this thought experiment is that we would not be in the position we are now if Al Gore had become president in 2001. Most likely we would not be in Iraq, or at very least we would not have the current partisan divides. Without Iraq (and possibly without 9/11 if we had a president who actually paid attention to the many warnings) Joe Lieberman would probably have never varied from the views of his party so sharply.
It is a mistake to look at Iraq as simply being a dispute between hawks and doves. Going into Iraq as we did was a tremendous mistake, and it doesn’t take being a dove to recognize this. For a “hawkish” Democrat to oppose the war does not necessarily mean a change in philosophy. It can simply be understanding the difference between when military solutions do and do not make sense.
Gore-Lieberman did not take office and we are in Iraq. If not for the war Joe Lieberman would probably not have been forced to seek reelection as an independent, and would probably not be backing the Republican candidate. However, the fact remains that Iraq did happen, Lieberman was on the wrong side of the issue, Lieberman is technically no longer a Democrat, and Lieberman is supporting the Republican nominee. Ed Kilgore has reviewed how radical a development this is:
Back when Lieberman first endorsed McCain, Ken Rudin of NPR did a useful analysisof precedents. The last example he could find of a Member of Congress endorsing the opposing party’s presidential candidate without retribution was in 1956, when Adam Clayton Powell, at that point the only African-American Member of Congress, endorsed Eisenhower. You can understand why Democrats might have refrained from punishing him. But since then, three congressional Democrats endorsed other candidates (John Bell Williams of Mississippi and Albert Watson of SC in 1964, and John Rarick in 1968), and all were stripped of their seniority in the House. Unlike Lieberman, all three were, if nothing else, faithfully reflecting the views of their constituents.
Since 1968, there have been, quite literally, hundreds if not thousands of Democratic and Republican officeholders who in one election or the other, privately preferred the other party’s presidential candidate. A huge number of Republicans didn’t endorse or campaign for Barry Goldwater in 1964, but nor did they endorse or campaign for Lyndon Johnson. And despite the incredible weakness of the national Democratic Party in the South and West during the 1984 and 1988 presidential cycles, you didn’t see any public defections from the then-robust ranks of elected Democrats, either.
This is, in sum, the Line You May Not Cross if you choose to identify yourself as a Republican or as a Democrat. John McCain surely understands that; had he followed the entreaties of some of his own staff in 2004 by endorsing–much less joining the ticket of–John Kerry, he would have been stripped of his party prerogatives instantly and eternally.
The fact that Joe Lieberman hasn’t just endorsed McCain, but has actively campaigned with him from New Hampshire to Florida to Iraq, and has also made it clear he’d be happy to speak at the Republican National Convention on his behalf, is an indisputable self-expulsion from the Democratic ranks, certainly made no less definitive by his semi-self-expulsion in 2006, when he chose to run as an independent against the winner of the Democratic primary in Connecticut, Ned Lamont. And no measure of “friendship” for McCain can possibly justify his recent remarksentertaining the possibility that Barack Obama, who endorsed him in that same primary, may be a Marxist.
We can all understand why Harry Reid, whose Majority Leadership depends on Lieberman’s current cooperation, hasn’t already indicated Joe would lose his seniority and committee chairmanship if, as appears almost certain, Democrats pick up at least a few Senate seats in November. And I for one don’t doubt that Lieberman does indeed vote with Democrats on most issues in the Senate. But sorry, no degree of “independence” or “bipartisanship” or “personal friendship” can justify what he’s done in supporting the Republican candidate for president. He’s picked sides in the one choice that most defines party, and those who continue to admire him should accept the consequences. I for one would respect Joe Lieberman as a Republican with enlightened views on a variety of issues more than Joe Lieberman as someone claiming to represent a fictional group of “loyal Democrats” supporting John McCain.
