Rick Hertzberg notices Joe Lieberman beginning to edge towards the lifeboats as the USS McCain takes on more water. "Now it’s John McCain’s turn to discover what sort of 'friend' Joe Lieberman is." This sort of behavior isn't new, of course. As Rick notes, Joe has always been out for Joe. Take this little vignette from the 2000 election:Lieberman’s seat was up that year, and he decided to run simultaneously for senator and Vice-President. Lyndon Johnson had taken out a similar insurance policy forty years earlier, but there was a difference. The governor of Texas in 1960 was a Democrat, so when Johnson resigned his Senate seat after the election a Democrat was appointed to replace him. The governor of Connecticut in 2000 was a Republican. If Lieberman had made way for the state’s popular Democratic attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, who would have won easily, and if the Supreme Court had allowed Gore to take office, then the new Senate would have split 50-50, with Vice-President Lieberman breaking the tie in favor of the Democrats. But, by insisting on having it both ways, Lieberman single-handedly guaranteed that the new Senate would be Republican—either by a 51-49 margin under a Gore Administration or (as it turned out) by the tie-breaking vote of Vice-President Dick Cheney. This was more than just routine political expediency. It was what was known that year as a character issue.Yikes. Though demerits here have to go to Al Gore, who could have just said you vacate the seat or I'll choose another running mate. In the scheme of things, one more vote in the Senate is actually rather more important than whether you choose Joe Lieberman or John Kerry as your vice president (the exception, of course, is if the president dies). It's actually surprising how little presidential candidates seem willing to demand of their circles. Hillary Clinton didn't force Mark Penn to step down from his PR jobs. Al Gore didn't demand Joe Lieberman go all in on a successful Gore presidency. It's weird.
