The Wall Street Journal recently opined that the Connecticut Democratic U.S. Senate primary between U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman and his challenger Ned Lamont is as though Scoop Jackson and George McGovern had returned from the dead to square off, if McGovern weren’t still alive. Like Jackson, Lieberman is a social liberal and a foreign policy hawk. Like McGovern in the Vietnam era, Lamont is calling for a “Come Home America” policy on Iraq.
This isn’t just any summer primary. Lieberman, of course, was the Democratic Party’s nominee for Vice President in 2000. And there are no “issues” being debated in this race. There’s only one: the Iraq War, specifically Lieberman’s support of the Bush Administration on the war. Lieberman is no conservative. He receives virtually 100 percent ratings from liberal interest groups ranging from NARAL to the labor unions. But with the war issue in the foreground, the Lamont campaign runs television spots morphing Lieberman’s face into that of President Bush and showing the famous “kiss” Bush gave Lieberman at the 2003 State of the Union speech.
Lieberman says he’s running as an independent if he loses the primary. But already national Democrats, including presidential frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton, have said they will support the Democratic nominee, whoever it is.
Whatever one’s position on the Iraq War, this race is worth watching to discern trends in American political parties and the larger cultural forces behind them. There was a time when the parties were defined more by economic and geographic realities than by ideologies. Remember that the 1972 Democratic presidential primary included the liberal antiwar McGovern and the Alabama conservative populist George Wallace. The Republican Party once spanned from New York’s liberal Nelson Rockefeller to Ohio’s conservative Robert Taft.
These days, that spectrum is no more, at least when it comes to social issues voters responding to the issues of the sexual revolution. On the abortion issue, for example, pro-life Democrats abound (such as Pennsylvania Senate nominee Bob Casey, this year), but no pro-life Democrat is seen to have a chance on the national ticket. The Lieberman campaign this year is a test to see if the same kind of definition is coming to the parties on issues of foreign policy intervention.
Right now, some of the most articulate defenders of the Bush war policies come from liberals (such as Lieberman, Christopher Hitchens, and, at least sometimes, the New Republic magazine). And some of the most vocal critics are on the Right (such as the American Conservative magazine and, sometimes, William F. Buckley, Jr.). Where does that leave pro-abortion, pro-war liberals like Lieberman, or pro-life, anti-war conservatives on the other side? It remains to be seen.
In the long run, perhaps this kind of tumult will result in two even more clearly ideologically identifiable parties. It is good, after all, to see candidates debating issues that matter, rather than celebrity or personality. If the voters of Connecticut see an honest debate about the politics of war, perhaps they will hear an honest debate about the ethical issues involved in such decisions. That’s the kind of conversation Christians can welcome, because it may lead to even deeper, more significant conversations about ethics and the common good.
In the short run, however, the Lieberman/Lamont race reminds us of how polarized the nation and its political sectors really are. In Sunday’s New York Times, U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a probable Republican presidential candidate, was asked about the campaign of Lieberman, his longtime friend. “I hesitate to say anything nice about him, for fear that it will be used against him,” McCain said. “And that’s a terrible commentary on the state of politics and the polticial climate today.”
