Joe Lieberman's Endless Hypocrisy

By Cliff Schecter, AlterNet. Posted October 30, 2006.

In 1988 a slightly younger but no-less-father-on-the-show-Alf-looking Joe Lieberman stared into a camera during one of his commercials in the Senate race, with that false earnest façade that has aided his electoral fortunes for years. He proclaimed, taking a clear shot at his opponent, three-term Republican incumbent Lowell Weicker, that "after 18 years, it's time for somebody new ... it's time for a change."

Lieberman claimed he wouldn't miss more than 300 votes, he wouldn't have one of the worst attendance records in the Senate and that he would retire after three terms (the tally for Lieberman after three terms and 18 years in the Senate: 418 votes missed, the second worst attendance record over the past six years and still clutching his Senate seat). Apparently, all of these statements are no longer operative.

In 2006, Lieberman is now playing the role of Weicker 18 years ago -- the only difference is his party affiliation. After his own party told him they'd had enough and decided to send him packing in the Democratic primary, he continued running against actual Democrat Ned Lamont and actual Republican Alan Schlesinger as a member of the exclusive Everybody Loves Lieberman Party, which I believe is its nom de guerre these days.

It is this willingness to say or do whatever is necessary to hold on to his U.S. Senate seat, damn the consequences to what he claimed to believe last year or even last week, that makes Lieberman, a smarmy, power-hungry little yapping poodle of a politician, the perfect poster-boy for the amoral might-makes-right culture that currently animates our political system.

Ever since Lieberman defeated elder statesman Weicker in that 1988 race, largely by portraying him as weak on Communism -- along the way garnering the support of William F. Buckley and the McCarthy-loving National Review -- there hasn't been a single issue on which Lieberman has been willing to risk an unpopular position or maintain a modicum of consistency.

He would seemingly invade Cuba tomorrow, but charges forth into slave-labor trade deals with Communist China at the behest of his corporate paymasters (and at the expense of his constituents' jobs). He once marched with Martin Luther King Jr., yet now forebodingly and dishonestly refers to Al Sharpton as "one of Ned Lamont's closest advisors," hoping the mere mention of the controversial African-American preacher will summon white-suburban fears of unruly invading black hordes who crave white women and seek Rotary Club membership.

Sharpton's response? "I've given more advice to Joe Lieberman than I've given to Ned Lamont," he told Election Central's Greg Sargent.

Last year Lieberman thought John Bolton wasn't worthy of being U.N. ambassador and voted accordingly. Yet, now that he needs Republican votes to win his do-over bid to hang on to his job, Bolton -- a "person" who has chased subordinates around a hotel trying to shoe-beat them -- has suddenly become the second coming of Adlai Stevenson or Daniel Patrick Moynihan on the international stage.

This propensity for changing positions like Angelina Jolie adopts children has been rightly covered and mocked by members of the Connecticut media and Lieberman's opponents. From support for privatizing Social Security to abortion rights, school vouchers to gay rights, there is not an issue that Lieberman won't jettison if it becomes politically expedient to do so. Yet, a few of Lieberman's more craven political maneuvers -- and their disastrous results -- have not received a full airing.

Lieberman takes pride in his reputation as an environmentalist and plays it up whenever he gets the chance. He's able to do it because the usual short-sighted single-issue groups in Washington have fallen merrily into his embrace.

In the League of Conservation Voters' March 10, 2006, endorsement of his candidacy, the League's press release stated, "As a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Senator Lieberman has worked hard to preserve and strengthen our nation's clean air and clean water protections." Apparently they never read George W. Bush's energy bill, which Lieberman was the only Northeastern Democrat to support.

The final version removed a provision in the Senate bill requiring that a paltry 10 percent of the country's power be produced by "renewable energy" sources by 2020, or around the time Lieberman will have been receiving checks for a baker's dozen years from the Social Security system he wanted to privatize. Yet, the bill did find space for $6 billion in taxpayer subsidies for the oil and gas industry, according to the nonprofit watchdog organization Public Citizen.

When Ned Lamont, in an October 24 debate, pointed out that Lieberman's support for the flawed bill might have something to do with energy industry campaign contributions Lieberman has received, the candidate stormed up to Lamont after the debate and called him a "goddamn son of a bitch," according to blogger Matt Stoller. Not the language one might expect from such a self-described pious man.

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Cliff Schecter, a contributor to MSNBC, is also political analyst for the Talk Radio News Service, writer for The Huffington Post and weekly guest commenator on The Young Turks on Air America. His meanderings can also be found at cliffschecter.com.

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