Remembering my friend, Joe Lieberman

I keep in mind precisely when Joe Lieberman turned my good friend — after he scolded me for not heeding the instructions of my Jewish mom.

In 2017, I used to be engaged on a sequence of articles for Salon about “centrism,” a once-dominant however quickly fading power in American political life. That Could I had interviewed two of essentially the most most outstanding remaining centrists, each of whom had to a point grow to be outcasts from their very own political events. One was Lieberman, a longtime Democratic senator from Connecticut recognized for his political independence. The opposite was his good good friend Christine Todd Whitman, the previous Republican governor of New Jersey. Whitman requested me to increase her greetings to Lieberman, and naturally I did so. However I forgot to say my very own mom, an enormous fan of Lieberman ever since he turned Al Gore’s operating mate in 2000, who had additionally instructed me she was keen to precise her admiration. 

I attempted to make up for this a few months later, as I sat down for an additional interview with Lieberman. In the course of the customary preliminary chitchat, I instructed him that my mom had needed me to say hi there to him, however I might prioritized Whitman as a substitute.

Lieberman gasped in feigned horror. “Oh no, Matt, you should not have finished that,” he stated. “Your mom should all the time be your first precedence. At all times!”

I perceive the the explanation why many liberals and progressives grew to dislike Joe Lieberman, who died on Wednesday at age 82. He gained his ultimate Senate marketing campaign in 2006 as a third-party candidate after dropping the Democratic nomination, largely over his assist for the Iraq conflict. He supported John McCain over Barack Obama within the 2008 presidential election, and was reportedly McCain’s first alternative as operating mate. In the course of the Obama administration, Lieberman was blamed — unfairly or in any other case — for the failure to incorporate a “public choice” within the Reasonably priced Care Act. There are different areas of disagreement, little question.

However I am right here to pay tribute to Lieberman not as a controversial political determine or as the primary Jewish American to look on a major-party presidential ticket — though that was absolutely the accomplishment for which he’ll be most remembered — however as a heat, caring, profoundly respectable man pushed by deep non secular conviction and a perception in bipartisanship. Greater than that, I’ll keep in mind him as my good friend, and can all the time really feel grateful for that dialog, amongst many others.

Bipartisanship, for Lieberman, wasn’t purely instrumental. It mirrored his religion that people with a various vary of philosophies ought to be capable to put aside their variations within the title of fixing society’s greatest issues. As he as soon as defined to me, being a centrist “would not essentially imply that you’re within the coverage heart on a regular basis, or the ideological heart. It means, I believe extra broadly, that you just’re keen to compromise, to come back to the middle, and meet with individuals of reverse factors of view as a way to get one thing finished.”

Many politicians say they imagine in dialogue and compromise, in fact. Joe Lieberman lived it. He understood that we had political variations, each on particular points and when it comes to total philosophy. He was one of the vital conservative figures within the nationwide Democratic Get together and, as famous above, incessantly made widespread trigger with Republicans. I might describe myself as a democratic socialist.

None of that was a bug in our burgeoning friendship; it was a function. He favored to inform tales about his friendships with individuals throughout the political spectrum: He shared cocktails and dialog with legendary conservative columnist William F. Buckley Jr.; he watched the 2006 mockumentary “Borat” with McCain and Lindsey Graham, two of his finest buddies within the Senate. That additionally labored in the wrong way. He as soon as shared with me how deeply touched he had felt when Woman Gaga devoted a efficiency of her track “Speechless” to him, in tribute to his instrumental position in repealing the U.S. army’s “Do not Ask, Do not Inform” coverage. That second delighted his extra liberal buddies, he stated.

I by no means requested him about this instantly, however I imagine that Lieberman related simply with people who held many various factors of view partially due to his innate self-confidence. He knew he was clever, and believed he had mirrored deeply on points and reached the proper conclusions. However he by no means felt threatened by others who disagreed. As a substitute, he reacted with curiosity and humility, approaching every human interplay as a possible studying expertise.

That did not imply you have been going to alter his thoughts, as I found on a number of events. Nevertheless it meant that his thoughts, and his coronary heart, have been sincerely open to you.

We regularly talked about our shared Jewish heritage, and the necessary position it performed in our lives. Lieberman was refreshingly frank in discussing his personal privilege, admitting that he had skilled little or no overt antisemitism. After Gore selected him as vice-presidential operating mate in 2000, he recalled, he was relieved by the full absence of bigotry in most people’s response. However he additionally understood that prejudices run deep in human society, and that Jews are all the time susceptible to the resurgence of hate. I imagine that, for him, reasonable or centrist politics offered an ethical and logical antidote to that historic drawback, encouraging empathy and transferring dialogue away from the ideological extremes the place antisemitism and different types of hate are prone to thrive.

“All through historical past, at any time when extremists start to achieve energy, they inevitably come for the Jews,” I emailed Lieberman lower than a month in the past. “Antisemitism is a barometer in that approach.”

“Sure,” he replied over his iPhone. “Sadly sure.”

I as soon as wrote an article for Salon about how Lieberman’s vice-presidential nomination in 2000 modified my life, a few years earlier than I might meet him: 

It’s arduous to seize in phrases what this meant to a Jewish child who had almost been murdered as a so-called “Christ-killer” three years earlier. On some degree, it felt as if America’s vp wasn’t simply elevating Lieberman, however sending a message to Jews like me that he was watching our again. As a toddler, I had related Jewishness with feeling rejected; Gore helped me see that, for thousands and thousands of People, it was one thing to be embraced. By accepting Gore’s provide, Lieberman confirmed that it additionally wasn’t one thing to be afraid of displaying to the world.

I am sorry that I by no means bought the an opportunity to speak with Lieberman about Senate Majority Chief Chuck Schumer’s latest speech calling on Israelis to take away Benjamin Netanyahu from energy amid the chaos and carnage of the Gaza conflict. Lieberman had criticized Schumer (whereas calling him a “good friend”), arguing that it was inappropriate for People to intervene within the home politics of a democratic ally. I can sympathize with that precept, however I want I might requested him how he actually felt about Netanyahu’s prosecution of the conflict, which has alienated so many individuals world wide, together with Jews. 

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To be clear, I did not disagree with Lieberman’s broader issues about rising antisemitism. We shared the view that school campuses have grow to be breeding grounds for Jew-hatred, with many college students utilizing opposition to Israel or assist for a Palestinian state as an excuse for expressing vile opinions. However that concern additionally match into Lieberman’s bigger open-mindedness. Final 12 months, I shared with him an article I wrote about my great-uncle, a Jewish World Struggle II veteran who helped liberate a Nazi focus camp, and in addition a lifelong liberal who believed that “individuals can criticize Israel in good religion with out being antisemitic” and that it was necessary for individuals like him to talk out in opposition to “the Israeli authorities’s mistreatment of Palestinians.” Lieberman might or might not have disagreed with that premise; I am going to by no means know. He instructed me on the time that the article was “a poignant and highly effective story and may be very well-written.”

As I course of my grief about my good friend’s passing, I perceive full effectively — as he additionally understood — that he’ll all the time be, at finest, a controversial determine for progressives. That has nothing to do with the person I bought to know. I marvel at his kindness, on the basic decency that drove him to pursue a friendship with a clumsy, autistic reporter with strongly divergent political opinions. The Yiddish time period “mensch” involves thoughts. When our distant ancestors in Jewish central Europe coined that phrase, that they had individuals like Joe Lieberman in thoughts. 

Lieberman as soon as instructed me that John F. Kennedy’s election as the primary Roman Catholic president, coupled with Abraham Ribicoff’s 1954 election as the primary (and solely) Jewish governor of Connecticut, “gave me confidence that doorways had opened for me.” He then added, “I am gratified that you just had that very same response, albeit at a distinct time otherwise, to my 2000 marketing campaign.”

I am certain he wished he may have befriended Kennedy, whom he fervently campaigned for as an adolescent in 1960 and considered as his political hero. In that one sense, I used to be luckier than Joe Lieberman: I bought to satisfy my hero. I even turned his good friend.