A Farewell to Joe Lieberman

News of the death of Senator Lieberman, which just crossed the wires, is being received with exceptional sadness here at the Sun, as it will be no doubt for millions of Americans. We think of Lieberman as one of the last of a magnificent and fast-fading species, the centrist Democrat. It’s hard to imagine a time when his counsel, his personal example, and his penchant for civil society will be more keenly missed than in our current crisis.We didn’t know Lieberman well. We covered him, though, for decades and with growing admiration. We admired him personally, including for his fidelity to his religious obligations at a time when religious freedom has often been honored in the breach. We admired his service in the Senate — three terms as a Democrat and then one as an independent, after his gutsy and victorious run upon being spurned by his party.It happens that we and our wife were paddling a canoe across a lake in Maine when word reached us in the summer of 2000 that Vice President Gore tapped Lieberman as his running mate. We exclaimed that we might even vote Democratic. It wasn’t his religion that tempted us, though it would have been a historic moment to inaugurate a Jewish person as vice president. Rather, it was his character and his policies.In the event, Mr. Gore ran to the left and Lieberman was trapped in a campaign that, we can imagine, must have been uncomfortable. It turned out to foreshadow the leftward trajectory of the party that was too much for us — and, him, too, it turned out in Connecticut. Then, in 2008, came the remarkable swell of sentiment for Senator McCain to choose Lieberman, by then an independent, to be his running mate.That was set down as inadvisable, or even unthinkable, by party-line Democrats. We issued an editorial called the “Logic of Lieberman.” Proponents of the idea reckoned that Lieberman would attract to the Republican ticket not only independents but the lunchpail blue-collar Democratic voters who have been averse to Senator Obama. It would signal that McCain aimed to unite the country.Our enthusiasm for the idea was greatly strengthened after his speech at Commentary’s annual dinner that year. Lieberman pointedly called the Times “a once-great newspaper” and said that the editor of National Review, William F. Buckley Jr., had been like an “older brother” to him — and, indeed, had endorsed Lieberman against the Republican, Lowell Weicker, when Lieberman first won election to the Senate.Lieberman spoke of how the Democratic Party had lost its way, from a party that was once “unhesitatingly and proudly pro-American” to one that came under the sway of a philosophy that saw America as the aggressor. It was a sense that had been building in us since the Democrats in Congress forced our abandonment of Free Vietnam.One of the remarkable features of Senator Lieberman’s career is that, even after his years in the Senate, he kept playing a part in our national debate. In recent years his attention was devoted to efforts to promote a centrist political movement under the banner of “No Labels.” He had been slated to speak with the Sun on the 2024 race, asking of the two likely nominees, “Is this the best we can do?”Yet his crusade, all too typically, encountered hostility from his former party, which accused No Labels of undermining the Democratic nominee and even potentially acting as a spoiler, handing the election to President Trump. Lieberman, in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, took such criticism in stride, and with his characteristic good humor and with his shrewdness of political analysis.“Right now, looking at the polling, it’s not ‘No Labels’ that’s going to re-elect Donald Trump,” the former senator observed, reportedly while “unwrapping a cough drop” in his office.“Right now, it looks like it’s Joe Biden who’s going to re-elect Donald Trump.” Such insights are but one reason Lieberman will be, this year more than ever, sorely missed on the political stage and off.Lieberman’s family said that he died in New York City on Wednesday due to complications from a fall. “His beloved wife, Hadassah, and members of his family were with him as he passed,” their statement said. “Senator Lieberman’s love of God, his family, and America endured throughout his life of service in the public interest.” May all his family and countless admirers be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

A Farewell to Joe Lieberman

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