The Joe That I Know
The Senator is a genuinely nice guy, but he must be careful about
one thing
BY MARGARET CARLSON
Joe Lieberman is a good guy. how many times have you heard that
this week? Even George Bush said so, adding that it made
Lieberman just like him! Lieberman dispatched that one with the
old chestnut about thinking the veterinarian and the taxidermist
are alike since both give you back your dog. How like a good guy
to tell such a lame joke with such obvious delight. Rubber-faced,
slow-talking, yet irrepressibly exuberant, Lieberman at his
introduction in Nashville, Tenn., was already rubbing off on the
usually constrained Gore, who nearly scampered about the stage
retrieving a camera left there by Tipper and handing Lieberman a
handkerchief to wipe his sweating face. (Memo to Gore fashion
consultant: Lieberman's white shirt stayed dry because he wore an
undershirt.)
The good-guy part of Lieberman wouldn't be worth mentioning if
Republicans weren't striving to be the Good Guy Party. The Bush
campaign is premised almost exclusively on the strength of Bush's
personality and the perceived weakness of Gore's and the
character-free behavior of You-Know-Who. Now Gore has seen the
Republicans' Barney-ness and raised them one.
I got to know Joe Lieberman through Bill Curry, who sat beside
him in the Connecticut state legislature. Curry enlisted
Lieberman in his fight against substandard nursing homes, which
meant bucking the power of the popular Democratic Governor, Ella
Grasso. "Once Joe saw it was the right thing to do, I never had
to look over my shoulder to make sure he was still with me,"
Curry says. He has had only one bone to pick with Lieberman. Soon
after Curry lost the '94 Governor's race and joined the Clinton
White House, he got a complaining phone call from his mother,
feeling neglected after reading an interview with Marcia
Lieberman, who said her son called her every day. "Since I
couldn't very well tell Mrs. Lieberman to keep quiet, I called
Joe and told him to knock it off."
Lieberman's off-duty persona is much like his on-duty one, the
same mixture of great calm and boundless energy, whether in black
tie at the Kennedy Center, cheering at a Washington Mystics game
or in his flannel shirt in line at the Safeway. Close readers of
this column will remember when I was required by pesky editors to
order dinner for 50 entirely off the Internet, including a person
to help serve. When that person, like so much else, didn't show
up, the Senator got his own drink, and Hadassah rolled up her
silk sleeves to lug the ham and side dishes to the table, never
mentioning that there was nothing she and Joe could eat. She
keeps him from holding forth in the Great Man way, having told
him one time long ago that "there was one less Great Man in the
world than he might think." Hadassah was once a fast-track yuppie
executive, but now raises their 12-year-old daughter while
working part-time. She cheerfully blames her husband for "ruining
my career." He calls her at every turn and brings her flowers
every Friday. They have the marriage I would wish for my
daughter.
Democrats say Lieberman's winning a Funniest Celebrity in
Washington contest shows he's not as dull as he once seemed. I
was a judge, and, yes, he brought a cynical crowd to peals of
laughter, but that was because of a dry, droll, double-take
delivery suited to a small room. Lieberman's self-deprecating wit
is unlikely to turn the Cheney-Lieberman debate into must-see TV.
But it is his gentle humor, his sideways look at life that partly
explains why, in a fiercely backstabbing world, it was hard to
find material for a report on Lieberman: The Dark Side. I called
Republicans. I called people who knew him back when. On the
theory that no man is a hero to his valet, I called his driver.
No luck. Jimmy O'Connell, an Irish cop in New Haven, Conn., drove
Lieberman on weekends for a decade without getting paid.
O'Connell explains that he "liked his company." And he tells how
Lieberman dropped everything to fly up to O'Connell's bedside
after the ex-cop suffered a heart attack, how Joe helped get him
off booze, how he's become family. Lieberman called him last week
to complain that "the Secret Service won't let me ride up front."
Republican Senator Fred Thompson tells how, during
campaign-finance hearings, the ranking Democrat, Lieberman, was
"the one who stuck with me the whole time" because he was
convinced the system was corrupt and was steadfast in resisting
intense White House pressure. Republican Bill Bennett, who scolds
Democrats for a living, once said that what the country needed in
a President was "a good role model, like George Washington...or
Joe Lieberman. I'd vote for Joe Lieberman." The two grew close
while scolding Hollywood. At a recent event, Bennett recalled
Lieberman's asking him to quit going around referring to himself
as "Joe's rabbi." "Yeah," Bennett said, "I bet your Democrat
friends don't like it." "No," Joe drawled, "it's my rabbi who
doesn't like it."
Until this week, Lieberman was among the most religious people I
know--and religiously subdued about it. His Judaism first became
news when he lost the lieutenant governorship in 1978 after not
showing up at a convention held on the Sabbath. Such selfless
observance of faith is impressive, but what was background is now
headline--with 13 mentions of God in one speech. Enough already.
Lieberman's warm reception allowed Democrats to defuse the
Republican's Good Guy strategy. But it's a risk to turn around
and run on it. Moral piety is no more attractive in Democrats
than it is in Republicans. Woe unto those seen to be on high. How
tempting a target they make for those who would bring them down
to earth.
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