you can have him, we don't want him

Prediction: if John McCain becomes the Republican nominee for president, his running mate will be Senator Joseph Lieberman (CfL-CT). I have been saying this privately since last year, but today's report in the News-Times of Connecticut that Lieberman will 'quite possibly' attend the Republican convention suggests that he is already laying the groundwork.

It would suit McCain's empty 'maverick' brand to choose a running mate from the other party—if by 'other party' one means the Connecticut for Lieberman Party. To people who don't follow politics closely, it would probably look like a bold move to bring the two parties together and overcome the partisan rancor that supposedly accounts for government dysfunction. How strongly could conservatives object to a running mate as hawkish as Dick Cheney and as committed to the culture wars as Pat Robertson? And he would certainly add votes from Connecticut South, also known as Florida.

For Lieberman it would be a return whence he came. It's worth recalling the circumstances of his election to the Senate in 1988. Lowell Wiecker, the Republican incumbent, was a true maverick. Here is the first paragraph from the New York Times's coverage of the campaign for September 30, 1988:

'At a Free South Africa conference here last weekend, a crowd of liberals applauded the arrival of the senior Senator from Connecticut, Lowell P. Weicker Jr. They nodded when the rambunctious Republican from Greenwich reminded them that he was the first, and so far the only, Senator to be arrested at an anti-apartheid demonstration.'

The headline was 'Foe Slowed by Weicker's 2-Party Appeal'. Foe indeed.

It is hard to see how an anti-abortion, anti-gay, pro-war candidate like McCain can claim the mantle of maverick. A sitting Republican Senator arrested for civil disobedience outside the South African Embassy? Now that's what I call a maverick.

Lieberman squeaked by with a margin of victory of 7,000 votes out of almost 1.3 million cast (NYT, November 9, 1988), or 49.7% to 49.0%, and the endorsements of William F. Buckley and other Republicans who found him more conservative than their own party's candidate. And Republicans did the same thing to re-elect Lieberman in 2006 after he lost the Democratic primary to Ned Lamont.

Whatever happens, the Democrats will surely pick up more seats in the Senate this year, at least six say I, and won't need the CfL Senator from Connecticut to caucus with them anymore.

One last point: earlier tonight I was watching Christopher Dodd, Connecticut's Democratic Senator, on C-SPAN2 filibustering against retroactive telecom immunity on the Senate floor. Dodd's father was a prosecutor at Nuremberg, and Dodd fils, invoking his father's legacy, has taken a hard line against abuses of power by the Bush administration. That doesn't make him a maverick, but in an age of wanton abuse of power and equally wanton cowardice by the opposition party, it does make him a hero. I'll take the hero over the maverick anytime.