His convictions were his superpower and his weakness

Over his two dozen years in the Senate, Joseph Lieberman, who died this week at age 82, broke with his party on numerous occasions – earning a lasting enmity among many, particularly progressives.

But ironically, it was one of his earliest and most dramatic stands against the prevailing Democratic winds that helped land him the vice-presidential spot on Al Gore’s 2000 presidential ticket.

In September 1998, as the scandal surrounding Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky was reaching proportions that were leading to his impeachment, most Democrats were rallying to the president’s defence.

Not Joe Lieberman.

The Connecticuter went to the Senate floor and, in sonorous, carefully measured tones, said: “The transgressions the president has admitted to are too consequential for us to walk away and leave the impression for our children today and for our posterity tomorrow that what he acknowledges he did within the White House is acceptable behaviour for our nation’s leader.”

Though Lieberman stopped short of his rumoured plan – calling for a censure of the president – his words struck like a bolt of lightning against the legalistic defences Clinton and his allies had been building. The two men had been friends going all the way back to 1970, when Clinton, then a Yale law student, rang doorbells as a volunteer in Lieberman’s first political campaign, for a state Senate seat. But it was that rectitude – or sanctimony, in the view of many – that positioned Lieberman to be Gore’s choice as a running mate two years later. Yes, it was historic. Lieberman would have been the nation’s first Jewish vice president. But few doubted that the real imperative was to bring aboard what Eric Pooley, my colleague at Time, wrote was “a life-size can of air freshener”.

Gore was running against Texas Governor George W Bush, who at every turn was promising to restore “dignity and honour” to the White House. Picking Lieberman was Gore’s effort to inoculate himself against being tarnished by Clinton’s behaviour. It was also a nonetoo-subtle way of signalling Gore silently agreed with Lieberman’s indictment.

Publicly, Clinton praised the choice of Lieberman, but top administration officials told me at the time that he had railed about it in private. It further aggravated him that in Lieberman’s book published in February 2000, titled In Praise of Public Life, the Connecticut senator had written that the saga of Clinton’s affair “is the most vivid example we have of the virus of lost standards”.

Were it not for 537 votes in Florida, Gore and Lieberman would have made it to the White House, and more than two decades later, people still debate whether efforts to put a hygienic distance between the ticket and Clinton was a necessity or a mistake.

Meanwhile, history has not been kind to many of the apostasies that set Lieberman at odds with other Democrats, most importantly his ardent support for the Iraq War. In 2004, he was the early front-runner in the race for the party’s presidential nomination, but what his campaign referred to as “Joementum” evaporated in the first primary contests as sentiment against the war was building. By 2006, he had become so alienated from his party that he lost the

His words struck like a bolt of lightning against the legalistic defences Clinton and his allies had been building.

Democratic primary for re-election in Connecticut. Lieberman managed to hang on to his job – barely – by running as an independent. And in 2008, he made the rupture complete by campaigning for his friend John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee. The two even talked about the possibility of Lieberman becoming McCain’s running mate. Later, as McCain was dying, he said picking Alaska Governor Sarah Palin instead of Lieberman was “another mistake that I made” in his political career.

Lieberman’s stance on Clinton’s recklessness in the White House would also get a reassessment. As the #MeToo movement was taking hold in 2017, some who had defended the president expressed regret for having stood behind him – and, in doing so, attacking the women who over the years had accused him of offences that ranged from groping to exposing his genitals to rape, which Clinton has denied.

The faith Lieberman put in his own moral compass will be remembered as both his virtue and his vulnerability. Never did he trust himself more, it would seem, than when he was marching out of step with everyone around him.