More than almost anyone in public life, Joe Lieberman knows from experience how to finesse a vice-presidential question. At the end of an impromptu press conference after a visit to discuss global warming with sixth graders here on Monday, Al Gore’s 2000 veep pick was asked if he would be John McCain’s running mate this time around. “No,” Lieberman says flatly, as if the question were as ludicrous as his joining the antiwar movement. All Lieberman would add when prodded by a follow-up question is, “I think in this, as in so much else, [McCain] has his head screwed on right. I think he’s looking for somebody who shares his priorities and would be capable of being president.”
But in a presidential year filled with firsts (African-American nominee, serious woman candidate, former POW to be his party’s standard-bearer), Lieberman retains the intriguing potential to become the first Jewish, party-crossing, second-time-around vice-presidential nominee in American history. While McCain is keeping his vice-presidential deliberations intensely private, it is not hard to pick up Republican whispers that the wild-card Lieberman speculation is grounded in reality rather than water-cooler fantasy. No McCain campaign sidekick — not South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham nor former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina — does more than Lieberman to burnish the GOP candidate’s reputation as a different-drummer Republican. As top McCain strategist Charlie Black says about Lieberman (talking in general, not as a potential running mate), “Joe, who is nationally known for having run for vice president and being elected [in 2006] as an independent, is the best possible character witness you can have for McCain’s independence and bipartisan approach.”
Only a Shemanesque, “if nominated, I will not run; if elected, I will not serve” denial would put this concept to bed. Still, it appears unlikely – but it also comes down to a careful calculus in an election year which promises a close vote at the end of the race. Conventional wisdom (which I think correct) holds that McCain’s best chance of completely uniting and energising the conservative base is to nominate a VP who is firmly in the conservative camp. On the other hand, would a McCain/Lieberman ticket pull in more disaffected Democrats than might be lost on the conservative side, with the additional prospect of a Lieberman right turn luring conservatives back to the fold? It must be kept in mind that Lieberman is a conservative Jew – and while he trimmed a bit to the left in 2000 for the sake of Gore, I think that he could easily wind up “out conservativing” McCain on some of the social issues crucial to Evangelicals and orthodox Catholics. Nominating Lieberman would likely put Florida completely out of reach for Obama, and might well put New York, Connecticut and New Jersey in play for McCain – a fatal mixture for any Democrat seeking the White House.
Movement conservative or “hand across the aisle”? What should McCain do?
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