Lieberman Seeks Spiritual Purpose In Public Life By Robert Crooke Litchfield County Times February 25, 2000 Joe Lieberman has made a name for himself in Connecticut and on the national stage as a good man in an unpopular profession. In his fifth book, "In Praise of Public Life," written with Michael D'Orso, the two-term Democratic U.S. Senator from New Haven does nothing to dispel his deserved reputation for political and moral probity. It is the problematic reputation of the political life-- public service, as he calls it-- that he confronts. The book is an earnest plea for higher standards of character in politicians, and it equates public service with spiritual, almost ministerial, responsibility. Spirituality and public service give the political life meaning for Mr. Lieberman, who famously excoriated President Clinton about morality in a 1998 Senate speech on the Lewinsky affair, and the book recounts the Senator's political and personal lives in the framework of his own spiritual journey. That journey began in Stamford where he was born in 1942. He grew up in what he describes as an intellectually aware, lower-middle-class, religiously observant Jewish family. After he earned undergraduate and law degrees from Yale, he moved to New Haven in 1967. After some law firm work, he ran successful campaigns for State Senate in 1970, state attorney general in 1982 and U.S. Senate in 1988. The journey included some bumps, which he forthrightly lays out, such as a failed 1980 run for Congress from the New Haven district and the breakup of his first marriage in 1981. He married again in 1983, to Hadassah Freilich Tucker, and they have four children, including two from his first marriage and one from hers. The book also contains clear-eyed descriptions of the strategies and tactics required to run successful elective campaigns. He discusses the albatross of major political fundraising and the absolute necessity of polling and research about voter attitudes and one's opponents. His discussion of how "centrist" politics has won the day for Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill is particularly sophisticated. He reminds us that voter turnout for the 1996 Presidential election was 49.1 percent, the lowest in a Presidential year since 1924, and 36.1percent in 1998, lowest in a non-Presidential year since 1942. He says several key issues help explain voter disenchantment: Bitter partisanship between Democrats and Republicans, which, as an expression of a zealous cultural war of extreme rightist and leftist viewpoints, makes it virtually impossible for debate to reach compromise let alone legislative action. The role of special interest groups and political action committees in driving each of the parties to those extremes. The role of news media in highlighting the worst elements of that infighting while downplaying in-depth coverage of issues. The requirement for big-money campaign financing to produce massive TV advertising budgets, without which no significant run for office can succeed (The jury is out on whether John McCain's run for the Republican Presidential nomination may prove otherwise). Senator Lieberman describes how the burden of those conditions reduces many elected officials' terms in office to nearly constant campaigning, fund raising, posturing for the media and very little time for legislation or thought. In exhorting voters, politicians, and journalists toward a reawakening of "traditional" moral values, Mr. Lieberman sometimes expresses thinking that is fundamental in religious outlook. Elected officials who emphasize spiritual or fundamental religious concepts, and assume their natural unanimity, always run the risk of being marginalized by political opponents or by the media. Some marginalize themselves when their beliefs lack perspective on the proper balance between personal morality and social mores. But many of Joe Lieberman's ideas appear unassailably humanistic and, in the best sense, spiritual. Yet some of his references to the media's abuse of its First Amendment rights are troubling, particularly when he suggests that news and entertainment media may be close to "losing" those rights. That veiled threat originates, he says, not with him but "other more extreme, hard-line advocates" on Capitol Hill. (He made the point again in an early February speech to the film establishment as part of his "Appeal To Hollywood" campaign for more "family-friendly" programming.) Is Mr. Lieberman suggesting that there is the slightest constitutional leeway for legislation that might alter or limit the First Amendment? There is not. Is he suggesting that some Americans might be ready to give away this right in a misguided expectation of better, more moral media content? In that, he may be onto something, but he, or the "others on Capitol Hill" to whom he refers, would be setting off a bruising fight. Also open to debate is Mr. Lieberman's expression of democracy as a "community of shared values." One does not need to condone immorality or even disagree with his particular set of values and moral outlook to disagree with that definition. One would have thought the essence of democracy was free expression, however civilly, of differing values by different voices. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights certainly express a consensus of hopes for and protections of the rights of mankind, but those documents established rights, not values. There is no such thing as a "values-based" democracy. Unanimity of thought is totalitarian; democracy is multilateral and often messy. The book provides an almost election-platform-style listing of the author's public-service accomplishments and of his positions on pressing current issues, such as national security and defense spending reform; trade, tax and economic policy; environmental policy and cultural values, particularly as they are expressed in the entertainment and news media. He doesn't mention it, but his current Senate term runs out this year, and although the book looks forward in a hopeful, philosophical way, it says nothing about his plans for a third term, or whether a role in a potential Gore (or McCain) Presidential administration awaits him. The book's premise precludes a voluntary return to private life any time soon.