Over at Commentary’s Contentions blog, James Kirchik wrote a noble post demanding a reassesment of Joe Lieberman, now that he has been passed over for McCain’s running mate. Kirchik argues that since Lieberman did not modify his positions on key issues to him, such as abortion and the selection of judges, he should be admired for consistency, not damned as a hack:

To the VP nod, he could have announced his reversal on abortion (or at least say that he would support conservative judicial appointees) and maybe a few other issues that conservatives view as deal-breakers as soon as it became clear that McCain would be the GOP nominee earlier this year.

Isn’t it pretty to think so? But in fact, in 2000, Lieberman buried many of his neoliberal principles in order to make himself appealing to Gore. I wrote several pieces in the old New York Press gleefully pointing out Joe’s backtracking - in the face of the kvelling of the English-language Forward, which couldn’t take enough pride in Joe’s Jewishness - and his rush to embrace orthodox liberal politics (this was, of course, after Seth Lipsky had been pushed out).

As I wrote in the New York Press just after the 2000 election, “First Joe had to reverse himself on every issue he was identified with, such as the inherent racism of affirmative action and the necessity to move the US embassy to Israel’s capital. In writing.Then he had to lie about the plain fact that his views had now changed.”Then this rather dignified man had to tummel and ham and pantomime the intensity of his gratitude to Gore.”Then he had to apologize to the nation for the lamentable propensity for Jews to marry other Jews, and deny that they did so, or had any other reason than “clannishness” to wish to intermarry. We can only be grateful that Peter Jennings never asked him about circumcision.”
Kirchik defends Joes as someone who refuses to be what the left calls a “hack” - as Kirchik says, “using the word “hack” to describe someone who holds onto the same views, some might even say stubbornly.” Once upon a time, he was indeed capable of surrending his views, even falsifying the fact that he had ever embraced them, for his own benefit. Joe Lieberman is more complicated than Kirchik allows - as I wrote in another, now lost piece in the Press in 2000, he is not exactly the Jewish JFK that The Forward was looking for in those days.

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