Columnist Robert Novak reports that presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Senator John McCain already has a favorite who he’d love to pick for Vice President: Connecticut Independent-Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman:
Sources close to Sen. John McCain say the Republican presidential candidate likes the idea of Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman, re-elected from Connecticut as an independent in 2006, or former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge for vice president – if he could get away with it. The political consensus is that McCain couldn’t get away with either, and he knows it.
Lieberman, one of McCain’s closest Senate friends, vigorously supports him for president and sometimes joins him on the campaign trail. However, Lieberman opposes Republican policy on nearly everything except Iraq, where he has backed the war effort.
First, yours truly owes a big fat “You were right” to The Moderate Voice’s co-blogger Michael Silverstein, a former editor for Bloomberg News who writes brilliant prose and poetic commentary for TMV. In emails for the past several months — including last week — Silverstein has predicted that McCain would want Lieberman and would even pick him. Last week I emailed him and basically said “no way.”
And so now it comes out via Novak — an old-school conservative columnist who has excellent sources (I met Novak years ago when I was a student at Colgate University, when I was visiting Washington D.C. and he was very nice to me and a fellow student) — that McCain is pining away for Lieberman to be on the ticket.
It still seems highly unlikely for several reasons:
1. As Novak notes, some Republicans would have to choke down their disagreements with Lieberman on a host of issues just to have the satisfaction of seeing Lieberman run with McCain and bash his old party. In these days of litmus tests, where McCain is still walking a tightrope and trying to revive the 2000 “Maverick” McCain while staying loyal enough to President George Bush so he doesn’t lose his party base, it would be a huge risk. He could lose some Republican votes.
2. Lieberman is not totally loved by non-anti-war Democrats. There are some who greatly resent his alliance with the Republicans.
3. Lieberman is absolute anathema to the Democrats’ progressive wing, and his presence on the ticket would ensure they would vote in the election in huge numbers just to get back at Lieberman. The “netroots”
4. It is not a “given” that Lieberman will help McCain get the support of needed independent “swing” voters and moderates. These groups aren’t monolithic and a segment of them are strongly anti-war and could vote for Obama if Lieberman is on the ticket.
The UPSIDE is that by putting Lieberman on the ticket McCain could argue he has a bipartisan ticket. But that wouldn’t work except for Republican voters because many Democrats and independents now consider Lieberman substantially in the GOP camp, even though he really isn’t when it comes to many issues important to Democrats.
Putting Lieberman on the ticket would not exactly be as bipartisan as running with Harry Reid….
Could it still happen? Perhaps. But it is unlikely as Novak reports — particularly because Lieberman can be of enormous use to McCain in his efforts to attract angry supporters of Senator Hillary Clinton and Jewish voters.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.