New Low in Lieberspeak

The Senator who has made “Independent” a dirty word in Washington outdid himself today.

On ABC “This Week,” Joe Lieberman found unspeakable new ways to attack the Party that nurtured his political career and rejected him only after his cheerleading for George Bush in Iraq.

"The leading Democratic candidates for president,” he intoned, “are competing with each other to see which one can more quickly pull more of our troops out of Iraq, while our troops are there fighting and now succeeding with a lot on the line."

They are doing this, Lieberman says, to satisfy "vested interest groups within the left" and so he now inclines toward Giuliani and McCain for ’08.

The real test may come when Mike Bloomberg decides to run as an Independent. It was Bloomberg who saved Lieberman’s sorry hide last November with manpower and money, but loyal old Joe may forget that as easily as his pompous declarations that it was the idealism of John F. Kennedy that inspired him to go into politics.

Being kissed in public by George W. Bush, like being bitten by a vampire, is obviously a life-altering experience

Three-Way Subway Series

If Bloomberg runs as an Independent, a possibility that seems much likelier than it did 24 hours ago, and the Republican and Democratic front runners are nominated, the '08 election will be all New York all the time.

If so, there would be unprecedented religious, regional and cultural cross currents, a potential for social conflict that makes the issue of Mitt Romney's Mormon faith look simple. An unmarried Jewish billionaire, a thrice-married Italian-American with a family background of organized crime, the first woman President trying dissociate herself from her husband's scandalous history--enough plot lines for a dozen beach novels.

In such a campaign, Americans might find out more about their deepest feelings and prejudices than they want to know.

On the bright side, at least this three-way race would be free of attack ads picturing opponents as latte-drinking cosmopolites who are out of tune with America’s heartland.

Bloomberg the Iffy Independent

As the New York Mayor’s departure from the Republican Party stirs political excitement, it may help to remember his role in giving us another Independent on the national scene last year--Joe Lieberman.

After the voters of Connecticut repudiated Lieberman in their party primary for his cheer-leading the war in Iraq and the Republicans nominated a non-entity who would draw only 10 percent of their vote, it was Bloomberg who supplied the crucial money and manpower to elect him as an “Independent” who is now holding his former party hostage over control of the Senate and cheer-leading for a war in Iran.

If Bloomberg’s philosophy as a technocrat extends to this kind of impartiality about the most passionate issue of our time, what price Independence? His leadership on gun control is impressive, but then again his embrace of Gov. Arnold on the other coast is not reassuring.

Bloomberg is too intelligent to remain a Republican, but does he have the heart and commitment for anything more?

Voters: "Wake Us When It Starts"

Today’s new Presidential poll numbers evoke a response akin to that of many first-time jurors--wonder at how often a randomly selected group of people can come up with the right, or at least a reasonable, answer.

After all the Gallup deep-thinking about the static results, voters could be saying the equivalent of “Wake me when it’s over” or “when it really starts.”

In an attenuated campaign, that may be as good an answer as any. From week to week, debate to debate, how much new information or insight are they getting about people posturing for their approval? It must mean something that three leading candidates are still undeclared and that an Independent like Mike Bloomberg is waiting in the wings.

Clinton, Giuliani et al have no choice but to keep doing what they have been, but how much long-term damage (or even worse, boredom) will be incurred by all this prolonged scrutiny and nit-picking criticism?

The new results show Obama slipping somewhat but, if he is really following a tortoise-and-hare strategy, that may be as good a response as any to this weird endurance contest.