Joe Lieberman: May his memory be for a blessing
For a man as genial, upright and mild-mannered as Joe Lieberman, he could inspire a staggering amount of loathing — most of all from fellow liberals. Some would never forgive his scalding speech about Bill Clinton’s extramarital affair, others his stalwart support for the invasion of Iraq, others his campaigning for John Mccain in the 2008 presidential election.
Lieberman never seemed to care. He did what he thought was right and was rewarded with four terms in the Senate — the last time as an independent — and, very nearly, the vice presidency in 2000. When he died this week at 82 from a fall in his New York apartment, he could lay claim to being the most consequential elected Jewish official in the history of American politics.
Today, Lieberman’s detractors may want to reconsider their loathing, and not just for politeness’ sake.
Although his foreign policy views tilted right, he was also a champion of labor unions, gay rights and climate change legislation; Obamacare never would have become law without his vote. Earlier in his life, he helped register Black voters in Mississippi — part of his belief, as he wrote at the time, that “this is one nation or it is nothing.”
That conviction probably helped explain his brand of politics, which never sat well with partisans but made him important and interesting as a legislator. Lieberman wasn’t a centrist, at least not in the sense of being a difference splitter. But he never felt bound to follow the ideological herd, and he had a moral code that overrode political expedience, in ways that could earn him enmity and respect at the same time. After he blasted Clinton, the thenpresident called him to say, “There’s nothing you said in that speech that I don’t agree with. And I want you to know that I’m working on it.”
Most Americans probably would agree that our political system is ailing, not least because partisanship has become so extreme and so few politicians are willing to work across political differences or challenge the most rabid partisans on their own side. Lieberman’s political career is a model of how politics was once done differently, in a way that — whatever one thought about discrete issues — made democracy better for everyone.
Jews traditionally say of the dead, “May their memory be for a blessing.” Joe Lieberman’s memory is a blessing America sorely needs now.