Lieberman straddles the aisle
WASHINGTON -- Before Sen. Barack Obama announced his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, he sought advice from Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, who had run for president himself in 2004 and was the party's vice presidential nominee in 2000.
After detailing the need for stamina, the support of family and a rationale for running, Lieberman says he urged Obama to "go for it" and added: "The worst thing that could happen is that you don't win. And I said, 'Life goes on, I can tell you that.' "
Now Lieberman, who had served as Obama's mentor in a Senate program when the Illinois senator arrived in 2005, is doing everything he can to ensure that Obama doesn't win and Republican John McCain does.
Lieberman's turn from being on the Democratic ticket eight years ago to working to defeat it now has left him in a sort of political no man's land. While Lieberman's decision to caucus with Democrats has given the party its narrow control of the Senate, he skipped the weekly policy lunch Tuesday because Obama strategist David Axelrod was addressing it.
The closest precedent of an official who rose so high in his party, then worked against its presidential candidate could be Al Smith, the New York governor who won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1928 but by 1936 opposed President Franklin Roosevelt's re-election and his New Deal policies.
Lieberman's break stems in large part to his hawkish national-security views and support of the Iraq war, which prompted a primary challenge in 2006 from antiwar candidate Ned Lamont. Obama spoke on Lieberman's behalf at the annual Connecticut Democratic dinner that spring — "a man with a good heart, with a keen intellect," he said then — but endorsed Lamont after he won the nomination. Obama was one of only a few Democratic senators to give money to Lamont's general-election campaign.
Running as an independent, Lieberman managed to win a fourth term, albeit with more support from Republican voters than Democratic ones. That victory night was "the single most satisfying moment of my career," Lieberman says, sweeter even than his first upset win for the Senate in 1988 or his nomination for vice president.
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