JOBS FOR JOE. Mark Schmitt�s right-on observation that the Democrats need to find some graceful way to ease Joe Lieberman out of the race should get us all thinking about some suitable, dignified alternative careers for Connecticut�s junior senator. Herewith, some modest proposals: A Lieberman-McKinney Vaudeville Act. Yesterday�s losers make omelets of their broken careers by devising a sketch that can be performed in almost any venue with a minimum of costly scenery. It would go something as follows: Lieberman starts, lecturing the audience with a moral homily. Then McKinney pops him one. Curtain. After Larry Summers. Robert Rubin rigs it so that Joe can become the next president of Harvard. Lieberman proves expert at schmoozing donors, but causes controversy when he calls Cornel West to berate him for giving A�s to too many of his pupils, and West responds by telling Lieberman that he teaches at Princeton. Publisher of The New Republic. Lieberman takes the helm at the venerable magazine and many of its longtime liberal readers are dismayed. One hundred forty-five subscribers cancel their subscriptions -- a 60 percent decline. Prime Minister of Iraq. Unable to find a Shiite or Sunni leader able to pull the country together, Bush engineers Lieberman�s elevation to the top spot in Iraq. The fracturing country is instantly unified, though not in the way that Cheney assured Bush it would be. Surely, dear readers, you yourselves can think of more ways that Joe Lieberman can continue to serve his country. All suggestions welcome.
--Harold Meyerson