What About Lieberman?
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

John Bolton will be remembered as one of the three greatest U.N. ambassadors America has ever sent to Turtle Bay, along with Jeane Kirkpatrick and Daniel Moynihan. The president should nominate a successor who is like Mr. Bolton: thoughtful, judicious, and diplomatic but who is also — like Mr. Bolton — brave enough to say what is right even when no one wants to hear it. Someone whom the nation and the world can trust. The right choice is obvious: Senator Lieberman.
Why Mr. Lieberman? For one thing, he is a Democrat who has boldly and bravely endorsed the goals of our Republican president. In America, political disagreements used to stop “at the water’s edge” — a good idea for practical and not just idealistic reasons. When our enemies get the idea that our foreign policy is Republican or Democratic and not American, they are inspired to fight harder, longer, and meaner. The mere fact that our U.N. ambassador is a Democrat will be a loud-and-clear declaration that America’s mainstream is resolved to smash the enemies of freedom and democracy, in Iraq and around the world.
But Mr. Lieberman isn’t merely a Democrat who has supported the president’s Iraq policy. He is brave and principled. Virtually the whole Democratic establishment lined up against him this year when he lost the Connecticut senatorial primary to Ned Lamont. You might have thought his years of loyal party service would have counted for something, but evidently they didn’t. This didn’t matter to Senator Lieberman. He ran as an independent and won big.
We also know him here in Connecticut, where I’m a junior at a local public high school. My school is 10 minutes away from the New Haven home of Mr. Lieberman — who behaves as a mensch, never puffing himself up or acting like a big shot among the peasants. My mother sees him at the local supermarket minding his own business. My brother sees him at the Jewish Students’ center at Yale mixing it up with other Jewish New Havenites who need a lulav and esrog, a palm branch and citron, for the holiday of Succos or a place to eat kosher food or to praise God on an ordinary weekday morning.
Mr. Lieberman’s qualifications are obvious. What is not obvious is why he would take the job. A senator wields more power, especially when you are Senator Lieberman, and has a lot more job security than a U.N. ambassador. And if Mr. Lieberman accepted, the Democrats’ position in the Senate would suffer. Although the Democrats were grossly disloyal to him, he is loyal to the party, now and forever. Why should Mr. Lieberman accept this offer?
Because he’s a patriot. Because he could speak up more effectively for America at the United Nations than anyone else could. Because he knows that the U.N. ambassadorship happens to be highly important right now. And at least one precedent says that Mr. Lieberman might indeed say yes. In 1965, President Johnson offered the U.N. ambassadorship to Arthur Goldberg. Goldberg was on the Supreme Court. Supreme Court justice is an even better job than senator. But Goldberg was a patriot and he said yes. Mr. Lieberman should too.
But what about the president? Will he do the right thing and make this unexpected and guaranteed-controversial nomination? On the one hand, maybe not. He is determined to work with the Democrats in Congress and not be attacked for being crassly partisan. That’s why Mr. Bolton got the axe. Mr. Bolton’s U.N. record made a pig’s breakfast of the accusations launched against him before he took office. The president could have appealed Reagan-style over the Senate’s head straight to the country, and at least have made a good fight of it — but he chose to appease the Democrats. Or the president could have let Mr. Bolton’s recess appointment stand; his salary would have lapsed, but every patriot in the country would have chipped in to pay Mr. Bolton’s wages with overtime. But the president didn’t want to fight the Democrats.
Now that the Iraq Study Group has issued its report, the president needs Mr. Lieberman’s steady, authoritative voice more than ever. It’s true that the appointment would help the GOP in the Senate. If Mr. Lieberman went to the United Nations, the Senate would be tied 50-50. No doubt this would amount in Mr. Lieberman’s mind to the strongest argument against accepting. We can only hope and expect that his patriotism will outweigh his partisanship.
Since the 2006 elections the president has made some questionable appointments. It’s time to make an inspiring one.
Mr. Gelernter is a junior at Amity Public High School, in Woodbridge, Conn.