New Haven Independent

Connecticut’s prodigal U.S. senator, Joe Lieberman, basked Tuesday night in a prime-time nationally televised address before an adoring crowd of the party faithful — the Republican Party faithful.

In a keynote address at the GOP convention in Minneapolis, Lieberman delivered a passionate, cogent argument for the presidential candidacy of his friend, John McCain. (Click on the play arrow to watch the address.)

The address packed a punch because of how Lieberman presented himself: a “Democrat” who was backing a Republican for the nation’s highest office out of a patriotism that overrules the partisan party politics that has bedeviled Washington. Not even an “independent Democrat,” the moniker he’s been using since his party rejected him two years ago.

You’d never know that for the past two years Lieberman and his former party have been at war. Tuesday night’s speech was the latest battle. Call it Joe Lieberman’s Revenge.

“What, after all, is a Democrat like me doing at a Republican convention like this?” Lieberman asked the crowd Wednesday night. “The answer is simple. I’m here to support John McCain because country matters more than party.”

There were two ways to interpret Lieberman’s argument Wednesday night. It all depends on how you view the road Lieberman has traveled since emerging in 1970 as a formidable and unpredictable campaigner in the trenches of New Haven politics. And especially on how you view the turn his career took the past two years.

One view: Lieberman was once again the independent-minded maverick who put the national interest before his party or his career.

But there’s another view: Lieberman Tuesday night was the bare-knuckle Republican in Democratic disguise who once again brilliantly advanced the career of one Joe Lieberman.

The Patriotic View

For the story Joe Lieberman told America about John McCain Wednesday night is also the story he’s been telling about himself: about an independent politician who angers the “partisans” in his own party because he cares more about the good of his country.

That’s why, even though he’s a “Democrat,” he’s crossing party lines to back a Republican who’d make a better president, Lieberman said.

“I’m here because John McCain’s whole life testifies to a great truth,” Lieberman said. “Being a Democrat or a Republican is important. But it is nowhere near as important important as being an American.”

He spoke of how McCain angered his own party by pushing for campaign finance reform, limits on lobbyists, sanctions against influential corporations receiving government contracts, and immigration reform that made room for more newcomers to the country. He spoke of how McCain worked with Democrats and Republicans alike to achieve those goals.

Lieberman has cast himself the same way. He entered the State Senate in 1970 by toppling a powerful machine incumbent, Ed Marcus, with a message of liberal reform and open government. Eighteen years later he toppled an incumbent Republican senator with strong Democratic support, Lowell Weicker — by running to his right, courting anti-Communist Cubans and conservatives like William F. Buckley. In Washington, from his first days in the Senate, he built alliances with the ascending right-wing of the Republican Party, voting with the likes of Jesse Helms on anti-gay laws and Alphone D’Amato on tax breaks for the wealthy and decreased regulation of corporations; forming groups with the likes of Ralph Reed and Lynne Cheney to smoke out liberal influence in U.S. universities and support increased military spending and foreign wars; speaking up for Alberto Gonzalez and his legal justifications for torture during confirmation hearings for the job of U.S. attorney.

(Click here for a longer tale of Lieberman’s political education.)

When a Democratic president faced impeachment for lying about having oral sex with an intern, Lieberman scolded him on the floor of the Senate.

At each step Lieberman portrayed himself as a bipartisan bridge-builder putting the country’s interest above personal advancement or party ideology.

He said it more often the past four years as he and his party bitterly split apart. First, in 2004, he was humiliated in an attempt to gain traction as a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. His support for the Iraq war doomed him. Then, in 2006, his own party rejected him in a primary for his Senate seat. Lieberman had to run as an independent in the general election to regain the seat. He needed the votes of Connecticut Republicans — and crucial help from the Republican White House — to do it.

He returned to Washington calling himself an “independent Democrat.” He caucused with his old party, which needed him to maintain a one-vote majority in the Senate. In return the party gave him an influential chairmanship, of the Homeland Security Committee.

The “Joe First, Second & Third” View

But with a larger Democratic majority looming in the Senate next year, all sides know that deal is off. Lieberman will be lucky to earn a spot on the Water Cooler Committee, let alone a chairmanship, from his old party.

If, on the other hand, he helps John McCain win, he’ll emerge more influential than ever. He and McCain are old pals. They’ve worked together for decades and admire each other. Lieberman has been McCain’s sidekick on travels from Baghdad to Georgia the past months, whispering advice in his ear and standing by him for the cameras. McCain reportedly wanted pick Lieberman as his running mate in this campaign, but aides quashed the idea because of a feared backlash from Evangelical Christians.

Whatever Cabinet post a President McCain would offer Lieberman, one thing is for sure: When an international crisis brews, Vice-President Palin won’t be in the Oval Office helping decide whether to launch nukes. Lieberman will.

All of which is why Lieberman’s speech Wednesday night just as easily fits into a long-running counter-narrative: that of the politician who postures on ever-shifting principle that always conveniently advances his career.

Lieberman wrote in a political autobiography of why he stopped sounding like a liberal when he ran for office in the late ’80s: he’d lost a Congressional race by being painted as one at the dawn of the Reagan era. He’d never let that happen again.

He may have launched his career by taking on machine Democrats. But he quickly made his peace with them, and the Teamsters who helped pull their votes, as he ascended to the position of Connecticut attorney general, then U.S. senator.

When he began making alliances with the Republican right in Washington, he was cultivating powerful friends among a network of politicians and operatives who came to dominate the federal government and the national discourse. He became a star.

When he ran as Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore’s number-two in 2000, he suddenly backtracked on those principles: He no longer called affirmative action “un-American.” He embraced civil rights again and warned against dangerous Republicans.

When he ran on his own for president in 2004, he positioned himself as a Scoop Jackson Democrat, hoping to capture the votes of conservative Democrats. But he was still seeking the votes of partisans. So he ditched the bipartisan, bridge-building talk.

Let’s Go To The Videotape

Exhibit A: this video, posted Tuesday on an influential liberal website, Talking Points Memo. It features clips from Lieberman’s speeches on the primary campaign trail in 2003-4. The quotes offer a remarkable contrast to the speech he gave at Tuesday night’s GOP convention: They’re a cascade of taunts and warnings about the evils and dangers of Republicans. (Click on the play arrow to watch.)

“Americans are increasingly connecting their worries about the future with the frail leadership of George W. Bush.” Lieberman said then.

“He’s committed almost $3 trillion in our national treasury in these tax cuts which we cannot afford, which were unfair… Today it is the Democratic Party that is the party of fiscal responsibility and economic growth… The current tax system is unfair. The middle class is squeezed by the poor economy, by insecurity, by health care costs…

“Let’s not let George Bush and the Republicans claim they have a monopoly on values… They don’t … When they give away the national treasury to the people who don’t need it in tax cuts because they’re so wealthy. They don’t have the money to help our children who are poor…”

You get the idea.

Then came the final repudiation by Connecticut Democrats in the 2006 primary.

Back in Washington, Lieberman reserved all his public jeremiads for Democrats. He attacked their patriotism. He became President Bush’s most vocal ally in support of the Iraq war.

And on the trail for John McCain, he seemed to take glee in attacking Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. At one point Fox News asked Lieberman if Obama is a Marxist. Lieberman responded that that was a “good question.”

Back home, Lieberman’s base continued to wither. And not just Democrats; independents too. The latest Quinnipiac poll showed that if McCain had picked Lieberman as his running mate, he would have lost votes in Connecticut. And check out these “buyer’s remorse” numbers. One influential moderate Democrat called last week to have Lieberman expelled from the party — now. Nationally, liberal groups have demanded that Senate leaders not wait until January to strip Lieberman of his committee chairmanship. His only hope for remaining relevant rests with his Republican soulmate running for the nation’s top job.

Bipartisan Again, For 1 Night

You wouldn’t have know that watching Lieberman’s GOP convention speech Tuesday night, though.

While he made some criticisms of Obama, Lieberman strayed from his recent harsh attacks. That wouldn’t have sold. The script on Tuesday called for “Democrat” Lieberman once again preaching post-partisanship.

“As you well now we meet tonight in the wake of a terrible storm that’s hit the Gulf Coast,” he said. “It really hurts all of us no matter where we live, because we are members of the larger American family. Right? …

“John [McCain] understands that it shouldn’t take a natural disaster like Hurricane Gustav to get us to take off our partisan blinders and work together to get things done. It shouldn’t take a natural disaster to teach us that the American people don’t care much if you have an ‘R’ or a ‘D’ after your name. What they care about is: are we solving the problems they are up against every day?

“What you can expect from John McCain as president is precisely what he has done this week: which is to put country first. That is the code by which he has lived his entire life, and that is the code he will carry with him into the White House. I have personally seen John over and over again bring people together from both parties to tackle our toughest problems we face.”

“God made only one John McCain. And he is his own man.”

It was convincing theater — for anyone who hasn’t been watching Lieberman back home and subscribing to one of the two narratives of his political journey.