Path to Power
Lieberman was born on Feb. 24, 1942, in Stamford, Connecticut, where his father owned a liquor store. His parents were Orthodox Jews, and he remains deeply observant. He attended Yale and wrote his senior thesis on John Bailey, the state Democratic Party boss for 20 years, which turned into a glowing book. His ambitions clear, Lieberman earned the nickname of “senator” from his Yale classmates.
"We called him that because he had the same calm, statesmanlike affect that he does now, but in an eighteen or nineteen-year-old it was a unique thing," Pete Putzel, a college friend, told the New Yorker in a December 2002 profile. "Joe was, even then, something of an establishment person."(2)
Lieberman graduated in 1964 and earned a degree from Yale Law School in 1967. Fulfilling his classmates’ prophesy, he was elected to the Connecticut state Senate in 1970 and in four years rose to majority leader. In 1980, Lieberman lost a House race and entered a private law practice, but rebounded in 1982 when he was elected state attorney general. For the next six years, Lieberman built a statewide reputation as a champion of environmental and consumer-protection causes.
When Lieberman challenged Republican Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. in 1988, many political observers believed he had overreached. The popular moderate was seeking his fourth term, but Weicker’s tendency to pick fights with Republicans, including the Bush family, along with his middle-of-the-road policy views, had eroded support from his political base over the year.
Lieberman won endorsements from National Review publisher William F. Buckley, among other conservatives, and cast his opponent as lazy and detached, including in an ad that has become a political legend. The ad depicted Weicker as a bear hibernating during important votes. Lieberman beat Weicker by less than a percentage point.(3)
As a senator, Lieberman staked out national security and the environment as his chief legislative interests. In 1990, he co-sponsored the Clean Air Act, and established himself over the years as a tireless champion of Israel, earning him vital political support for his two White House bids, for vice president in 2000 and president in 2004. Mark Vogel, chairman of the pro-Israel National Action Committee, called Lieberman “the No. 1 pro-Israel advocate and leader in Congress. There is nobody who does more on behalf of Israel than Joe Lieberman."(4)
The 'Third Way'
In 1995, Lieberman became chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist group formerly chaired by Bill Clinton. The Connecticut senator outlined his vision for centrist political movement in a DLC speech that November.
“There is, my friends, a yearning for a new kind of politics for a third way,” Lieberman said. “Our third way rejects both the old Democratic notion that government can and should solve all the people's problems, and the new Republican notion that government can and should do little or nothing to solve the people's problems. The third way substitutes in their place the principle of mutual responsibility, that government does best when it helps people solve their own problems.”(5)
Clinton Impeachment Controversy
Lieberman’s conservative streak led him to embrace Republican ideas like school vouchers and to launch the occasional moral crusade. Lieberman achieved the biggest headlines of his career when he delivered a withering rebuke of Clinton for his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
Speaking on the Senate floor in 1998, Lieberman accused his old DLC friend of “premeditated” deception for apparently engaging in "extramarital relations with an employee half his age and did so in the workplace in the vicinity of the Oval Office. Such behavior is not just inappropriate. It is immoral."
Lieberman framed the affair as a personal affront: "President Clinton had, by his disgraceful behavior, jeopardized his administration's historic record of accomplishment, much of which grew out of the principles and programs that he and I and many others had worked on together in the new Democratic movement.”(6) Lieberman voted against impeaching Clinton, but the denunciation was widely viewed as a leading reason Al Gore picked Lieberman as his 2000 running mate and a way for Gore to create distance with the president. Clinton, for his part, bore no hard feelings against Lieberman. "I think he's one of the most outstanding people in public life," Clinton told reporters in August 2000 when the Lieberman pick was announced.(7)
2000 Presidential Race
As a vice-presidential candidate, Lieberman launched a crusade against the entertainment industry for using sex and violence to corrupt children. “We're going to stand with parents across this country who are working so hard to raise PG kids in an X-rated society,” he declared at an event in mid-August, on the eve of the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, the home of the film industry.(8)
But Lieberman’s most memorable 2000 campaign role came after Election Day during the Florida recount. In contrast to Gore’s combative legal team, Lieberman assumed the role of conciliator, as the ballot showdown with George W. Bush unfolded.
According to Jeffrey Toobin’s book “Too Close To Call,” a turning point came on Nov. 18, when Lieberman was quizzed by the late Tim Russert on “Meet the Press” about a memo from Gore lawyer Mark Herron, urging the campaign to challenge the authenticity of late-arriving overseas ballots, many from members of the military.
"Let me just say that the vice president and I would never authorize, and would not tolerate, a campaign that aimed specifically at invaliding absentee ballots from members of our armed services," Lieberman said. "I would give the benefit of the doubt to ballots coming in from military personnel generally."
In Toobin’s assessment, “Lieberman capitulated completely…here again the Gore campaign (represented this time by Lieberman) backed down from a confrontation.” The 2008 HBO movie “Recount” portrayed Lieberman’s assertion about military ballots as a pivotal moment that led to Gore’s defeat. On Dec. 12, 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the ballot-counting process stopped, and Bush was certified the winner of the Florida primary, and became president.
2004 Presidential Race
Lieberman announced his own presidential campaign on Jan. 13, 2003. He skipped the Iowa caucuses, dominated by left-leaning party insiders, and staked his candidacy on the independent-leaning state of New Hampshire.(9)
In a CNN interview, Lieberman said he was banking on Granite State voters who supported Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the 2000 Republican presidential primary. "I think it's going to keep building to a surprising finish," he said. "I can get Democrats, independents and a growing number of Republicans who are disappointed with George Bush but won't vote for any Democrat."(10)
But Lieberman finished fifth in New Hampshire and fared poorly in all five Super Tuesday contests. He dropped out of the race on Feb 3, 2004.(11)
2006 Senate Race
In 2000, Lieberman had effortlessly won a third Senate term, barely nodding to his home state as he campaigned around the country with Gore. Payback came six years later. Connecticut Democrats had turned strongly against the Iraq war and were agitated by Lieberman’s fealty to Bush and absentee status. He was beaten by Lamont, a Greenwich millionaire who gained national support from liberal groups and some of Lieberman’s Democratic colleagues. The Lamont campaign seized on images like “the Kiss,” a moment before the 2005 State of the Union when Lieberman embraced Bush as he walked into the House chamber. But Lieberman knew that Lamont leaned too far to the left to compete for the independents and moderate Republicans who would be up for grabs in the general election. "For the sake of our state, our country and my party, I cannot and will not let that result stand," Lieberman said after his primary defeat.
After his November victory, Lieberman returned to the Senate liberated from partisan boundaries, and he drifted between the two political camps, depending on the issue at hand. His biggest break with his former party came in the 2008 presidential race, when Lieberman endorsed McCain and was seriously considered as the Republican candidate’s running mate. But his left-of-center social views seemed imcompatible with the party’s conservative base, and Lieberman lost out to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
Lieberman is married to Hadassah Lieberman, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. They have one daughter, Hani. Lieberman has two children, Matthew and Rebecca, from his first marriage to Betty Haas.
