On Viet Nam, Joe supports the Administration.
"Joe was no student radical, that's for sure," Terry Segal, a Boston lawyer who was also a classmate, said. "He was what was known then as a 'regular.' He was cautious. There were people who wanted the Yale Democrats to take positions on things like Vietnam, but Joe supported the Administration."
Bill Clinton help's Joe.
In 1970, after a short stint at a private law firm, Lieberman decided to put Bailey's lessons to work, and ran for a seat in the state senate, knocking on thousands of doors with a corps of campaign volunteers that included Bill Clinton, then a Yale law student.
Ol' Joe attacks from the left and THE RIGHT.
Lieberman remained behind in the polls until his political consultant, Carter Eskew, designed a series of television advertisements that portrayed Weicker as a cartoon bear, drowsing when he should be working. "We ran at him from the left and the right,"
Joe is not anti-business, joins the DLC.
In the Senate, Lieberman began to display a distinctive ideological pedigree. More important than any partisan affiliation, he had a reverence for American institutions--among them family, faith, private enterprise, and government itself. It was thus not surprising that Lieberman fell in with a group of moderate Democrats who were trying to remake the Party through the Democratic Leadership Council, which served as a sort of idea factory to revitalize the Party. "At that time, we were looking at why our party kept losing the Presidency," Al From, the longtime head of the D.L.C., told me. "It was because we were losing the heart of the electorate, the people who go to work every day and play by the rules. It was around that time that we came up with our slogan: 'Opportunity, Responsibility, Community.' "
"The New Democrat movement was originally started in the mid-eighties by people who were particularly concerned with two themes," Lieberman told me. "And these themes worked their way through the Clinton years--to regain the confidence of the American people as a party that not only understood and cared about national security but was prepared to protect national security, and to rebuild confidence in the Democratic Party as a party that not only cared about economic growth but knew how to help create economic growth and understood that to do that you couldn't be anti-business.
Lieberman goes against Clinton on stock options for executives
To demonstrate that he wasn't anti-business, Lieberman became a champion of stock options, a cause dear to many high-tech executives, and Lieberman liked and trusted most businessmen. In the mid-nineties, the Financial Accounting Standards Board announced that it was going to recommend that all companies report the costs of stock options as a business expense. Its argument was straightforward: stock options were an expense, which companies already reported for tax purposes, and omitting their cost from income statements deceived investors about companies' true financial condition. The corporate community rebelled, especially high-tech companies, which relied heavily on stock options to compensate their executives. Lieberman sided with them, while Arthur Levitt, Clinton's chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, backed the accounting board.
Joe joins with Republicans, attacks Bill Clinton
In his second term, he and William Bennett, the conservative former Secretary of Education, began a crusade against violence and vulgarity in the entertainment business. And then, on September 3, 1998, shortly before the release of the Starr report, Lieberman gave his famous speech on the Senate floor about President Clinton's behavior with Monica Lewinsky. Noting his "deep disappointment and personal anger," Lieberman said that Clinton's behavior was "not just inappropriate, it is immoral and it is harmful, for it sends a message of what is acceptable behavior to the larger American family, particularly to our children."
Make the pies higher! Lieberman campaigns against Gore
His conservative approach on the economy has brought Lieberman into a testy, long-distance debate with Al Gore. During the 2000 campaign, Gore often invoked the phrase "the people, not the powerful." Lieberman told me, "I didn't like the phrase, and to the best of my knowledge I never used it in the campaign, because it didn't really reflect what Al's record was. It didn't reflect the Clinton-Gore years. Why didn't it? Because it suggested class conflict, and we were not about that. It's very much not the New Democratic message. We were about growing the economic pie."
Lieberman throws Cheney debate
He did not assume the customary role of the Vice-Presidential nominee as hatchet man, which would have been out of character for him. At one key moment, in fact, Lieberman's gentlemanly bearing may have hurt Gore's chances. Lieberman's debate with Dick Cheney on October 5, 2000, in Danville, Kentucky, was a decorous standoff; the polite exchanges allowed Cheney to prove that he was not the right-wing ideologue that his voting record in Congress suggested he was. Lieberman remains defensive about his performance in the debate.
Lieberman sides with Republicans against Gore on Florida votes.
During the thirty-six-day post-election battle in Florida, Lieberman shied away from another fight. Sunday, November 19, 2000, nearly two weeks into the recount, when political momentum began to swing against Gore, Lieberman switched tacks. On that day, the Bush campaign began assailing the Democrats for trying to exclude the votes of military personnel who were stationed overseas if their ballots did not comply with Florida law. Norman Schwarzkopf, the retired general and Bush surrogate, declared, "It is a very sad day in our country when the men and women [who] are serving abroad and facing danger . . . are denied the right to vote [because] of some technicality out of their control." The next morning, Lieberman appeared on "Meet the Press" to answer the charge. Lieberman capitulated completely. Republicans around Florida cited Lieberman's statement to persuade local canvassing boards to allow hundreds of invalid ballots to be counted. (A later investigation by the Times found that six hundred and eighty illegal absentee ballots had been included in the final total in Florida.
Lieberman loves McCain. But doesn't " feel strongly negative" towards Bush.
It's a platform that shares a lot with the colleague Lieberman mentions most often: John McCain. "I love McCain," Lieberman told me. "I consider him one of my best friends in the Senate." McCain told me that he thought Lieberman would be a strong candidate. "He's a very decent, likable person who will wear well in a campaign," he said. "That is the kind of personality that does well in the retail politics of New Hampshire." I asked Lieberman whether he thought about asking McCain to be his running mate. I suggested to Lieberman that at least he and McCain feel the same way about George W. Bush. "Exactly," he said. Then he corrected himself. "I probably don't feel as strongly negative."
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