loosie: words: Clanton's Rant

Clanton's Rant

Joe Blow: Why Lieberman insists on running for Senator.

by Clanton McNeese | 2006.08.27

To appreciate Joe Leiberman’s addiction to fame, you need only watch Mick Jagger strut his aged butt across the stage as the senescent Stones tour the world yet again. Jagger is not ready to surrender the spotlight to competitors so young they missed out on the visceral thrill of “Satisfaction” thumping from dashboard speakers. Who can blame Jagger for his reluctance to accept membership among the tribe of regular guys? Once he’s a “former” rock star, Jagger becomes but a relic: “Sir Mick” in dusty decline. If he survives long enough, word of Jagger’s death will be met not with sorrow but with wonderment that he had neglected to die years before.

So it is with Joe Lieberman. No one should be surprised at his tenacity in defending his seat. It’s a great gig, being U.S. senator.

By corporate exec standards, senatorial pay is paltry, less than $200,000 per year. Perks are plentiful: free life insurance and retirement benefits, free flights, free reserved parking and tax preparation, plus expense accounts. Senators even get cut-rate haircuts and cheap lunches. Each senator also has a staff paid for by taxpayers. But none of these extras boosts a senator’s financial situation above that of a middling money manager.

What keeps Ted Stevens and Robert Byrd, Orrin Hatch and Joe Biden, and the rest of the senators ever hungry for another six-year term? It’s not the money, although many have somehow accumulated wealth far beyond their salaries. There are other benefits.

If you’re one of the hallowed hundred, you’ve got celebrity. When you speak, microphones bloom in front of your face. Because you’re a senator, your words have weight. When a mere citizen chastises Bill Clinton for his Lewinsky escapades, the world yawns. When Senator Lieberman speaks up, he is anointed to run for vice president.

You’ve got clout. Lobbyists, lesser politicians, and assorted other sycophants vie for your attention. They bow and kowtow and kiss your boots clean. Each supplicant cannily assesses your powers: you can make money move his way, you can find his knuckle-headed nephew a government sinecure, you can name an expressway rest stop after his pet Dalmatian.

As media mouths and political twisters deliver encomiums to Joe Lieberman, the uninformed listener might come to believe that the Connecticut senator is something more than a garden variety office-holding hack. In fact, he’s been exactly that, a smarmy cipher ever devoted to prolonging his ride on the Congressional gravy train. Now Lieberman is clutching his ticket stub with a Charleston Heston death grip. Ned Lamont will need to clamber over Lieberman’s cold carcass before gaining admission to the Democratic Senators caucus.

Disregard Lieberman’s claims of concern for his home state and his nation. He is making his independent run for one simple reason: after spending nearly two decades in the Senate, Lieberman can’t face his future as a commoner. Who would pay attention to his reedy whine, who would study his troubled, droopy face if he were not Senator Lieberman but just plain Joe? Lieberman knows the answer: nobody.

So Lieberman will struggle on, self-absorbed as always. He would not risk his Senate seat when running for vice president, even if it provided the chance that a Republican would be named to succeed him. He will surely stand firm against a whippersnapper like Lamont, despite his professed allegiance to the Democratic party.

There is no need to analyze Lieberman’s recent statements about Iraq or bipartisanship or anything at all. Every public utterance will be attuned to simple considerations: how will this play in New Haven? Who will agree in Waterbury?

Today, Joe Lieberman remains a member of a club whose charm is its exclusivity. If he is expelled, if he is denied entrance, it will be much more than defeat. It will be death.