How Joe Lieberman could have changed political history

What if.....?

(John McCain and Joe Lieberman)

Former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman died on Wednesday at age 82.

Opinions are mixed about the path of Lieberman’s career — he was on the 2000 Democratic national ticket and a speaker at the 2008 Republican convention, which is, well, a weird turnabout in less than a decade.

No matter how you feel about Lieberman, I would recommend reading the obituary that Mark Pazniokas wrote in the CT Mirror.

There’s a line in that obit — about Lieberman almost winding up as Arizona Sen. John McCain’s running mate in 2008 — that caught my eye and stirred my memory.

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I remember, at the time, hearing that McCain really wanted to pick Lieberman as his running mate. They shared similarly hawkish views on foreign policy, were close personally and McCain was drawn to the message a unity ticket would send.

McCain was talked out of choosing Lieberman by his campaign aides. Mostly because they were worried that Lieberman’s support for abortion rights would lead to a rebellion on the floor of the convention — a sight and a scene that McCain could ill afford.

And so, robbed of his preferred pick, McCain looked for a new idea. And that new idea — as you know — was little-known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

McCain, in his later years, admitted that he had major regrets about not picking Lieberman despite the concerns of his advisers.

“It was sound advice that I could reason for myself,” McCain said of passing on Lieberman. “But my gut told me to ignore it, and I wish I had.”

Which got me to thinking: What if it HAD happened? What if McCain had picked Lieberman as his running mate?

It’s a very interesting thought experiment.

So, the easiest -- and I think wrong — analysis would be that McCain-Lieberman would have swept to the White House. That people across the country would have been energized by this unity ticket and voted for it in droves.

Eh…..

Remember back to 2008. Barack Obama was a juggernaut, a once-in-a-generation politician who was expanding the Democratic coalition in ways no one thought possible.

The mood of the country was also deeply uneasy. The collapse of Lehman Brothers in mid-September triggered a vast financial crisis. People were desperate for answers. And it seemed like the current administration — led by President George W. Bush — didn’t have any.

What’s worse, the Republican nominee for president — McCain — seemed deeply out of touch with the crisis. “The fundamentals of our economy are strong, but these are very, very difficult times,” McCain said on the same day that Lehman collapsed.

Not even Lieberman thought that adding him to the ticket would turn McCain into a winner.

"I think that it would have been very hard for any Republican running that year," Lieberman told Salon in 2018. “I once heard Bill Clinton in 2009 do an analysis for a small private group of the 2008 election and he said that the election day in 2008 was not on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November. It was actually on Sept. 15. Of course he paused for exact the right amount of time and said that was the day when Lehman Brothers collapsed. And after that day no Republican had a chance to be elected president. It may be that he’s right.”

So, no, picking Lieberman wouldn’t have made John McCain president. But that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t have mattered!

I do believe that the message sent by putting a Republican and a Democrat on the same national ticket would have been powerful. (Not powerful enough to win, but powerful!)

The last (and only?) time I could find that it happened was in 1864 when President Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, and Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, ran on the same ticket.

Lincoln jettisoned his first term VP —Hannibal Hamlin, a Republican — and Johnson was picked at the Republican convention. They won. And ended the Civil War.

Again, I don’t think that in picking Lieberman, McCain would have ended partisanship in this country. Or anything close.

But, I do think it would have mattered — at least somewhat. Because it would have said that we don’t have to agree on everything to work together. That the key is a friendship and a mutual understanding. And trust. That what unites us is more — and more important — than what divides us.

So, there’s that. Which is, admittedly a little sappy and subjective. (I am a little sappy!)

But, there’s also this: If McCain picks Lieberman, there is no Sarah Palin phenomenon. Which, to me, is a very big deal.

Here’s why. Palin was, to my mind, the precursor to Donald Trump.

She was positioned as an outsider to the political world. She ran as a populist. She turned, rapidly, into a celebrity. She vilified the media — and refused to engage with them. She was always looking for ways to monetize her time in the spotlight. The base of the party loved her. The establishment of the party feared her. She made elites the bad guys. She was a provocateur more than a politician.

You get the idea.

I am not saying that if there is no Sarah Palin then there is no Donald Trump. I can’t possibly know that. But what I am saying is that Palin paved the way for Trump.

She showed him how it could be done. How to capitalize on the anger and the resentment coursing through the party base — at Democrats, yes, but also at Republican elites. How to leverage celebrity for political gains.

It was a blueprint. And one that Trump clearly followed.

And, to be clear, if McCain hadn’t picked Palin, she never becomes the national figure that she was (or is). The governorship of Alaska is not exactly a prime launching pad for national office. While she had a compelling story — stood up to the old boys network in Alaska and all that — it’s very hard for me to believe that if McCain had passed over her, we would be subject to this:

Man.

History is bent and warped by small decisions. It’s hard to even imagine all the ripples that can form from simply one rock being dropped in a lake. (Mike Gravel reference!)

The Lieberman pick (or, more accurately, not-pick) is one of those. Political history would have been changed — in my mind for the good — had McCain stuck with his gut and selected Lieberman.

He didn’t. And here we are.