Guest Post by Morbo
If he loses the Democratic primary election, Sen. Joseph Lieberman has vowed to run as an independent. While making this promise, he had the gall to invoke the name of a Democratic Party saint: President John F. Kennedy.
“I have been a proud, loyal and progressive Democrat since John F. Kennedy inspired my generation of Americans into public service,” Lieberman said on the steps of the state Capitol in Hartford this week. “And I will stay a Democrat.”
Just in case anyone has forgotten, I’d like to remind readers how Lieberman got his job: He defeated Lowell Weicker, perhaps the last truly independent Republican in the Senate.
Weicker was progressive on many issues and loathed the takeover of his party by the religious right. Lieberman ran to the right of Weicker.
In the summer and fall of 1988, during a time when Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis was being bashed by Republicans because he dared to point out that public school students could not be forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, Lieberman attacked Weicker over the issue of prayer in public schools. Weicker had opposed President Ronald Reagan’s school prayer amendment in 1984 and was a strong supporter of church-state separation generally. Lieberman saw this as a weakness and went for it.
For weeks Lieberman carped on the issue. In speeches he constantly called for a moment of silence, to, as he put it, “allow for meditation and prayer within a school setting.” He even went so far as to call prayer in schools “a friendly little puppy that wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
Weicker fired back with a good line: “The ‘puppy’ comes directly from the kennels of Jesse Helms, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.”
Lieberman also accepted money from a political action committee formed by William F. Buckley specifically to defeat Weicker. Buckley hated Weicker so much he ran a cover story, headlined, “Does Lowell Weicker Make You Sick?” in the National Review two months before the election.
You know the result. Lieberman eked out a victory by about 11,000 votes. Weicker was later elected governor of Connecticut as an independent.
Lieberman claims to have been inspired by JFK? Let’s compare the two. Lieberman exploited the school prayer issue for political gain. Kennedy had a chance to do the same — but turned it down. Kennedy was in office when the Supreme Court in June of 1962 struck down state-sponsored, mandatory forms of school prayer. Kennedy was asked about the ruling during a press conference. Here is what he said:
“I think that it is important that we support the Supreme Court’s decisions even when we may not agree with them. In addition, we have in this case a very easy remedy and that is to pray ourselves…. We can pray a good deal more at home, we can attend our churches with a good deal more fidelity, and we can make the true meaning of prayer much more important in the lives of all of our children. That power is very much open to us.”
Compare the two responses. Which one really inspires you as a progressive?
One thing is clear, and I’d like to say it to Lieberman: Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.