From the New York Times, “A Joe of His Own” by Bill Kristol In his weekly Times column, the Boss tries to analytically work out what a McCain/Lieberman ticket would mean to the presidential race and the country:
Now as a matter of governance, there’s no reason to think this would much matter. McCain has made clear his will be a pro-life administration. And as a one-off, quasi-national-unity ticket, with Lieberman renouncing any further ambition to run for the presidency, a McCain-Lieberman administration wouldn’t threaten the continuance of the G.O.P. as a pro-life party. In other areas, no one seriously thinks the policies of a McCain-Lieberman administration would be appreciably different from those, say, of a McCain-Pawlenty administration. Would McCain-Lieberman have a better prospect of winning than the more conventional alternatives? If they could get over the early hurdles of a messy convention and an awful lot of conservative angst and anger, I’ve come to think so. Obama and Biden will try to frame the presidential race as a normal Democratic-Republican choice. If they can do that, they should win. That would be far more difficult against a McCain-Lieberman ticket. The charge that McCain would merely mean a third Bush term would also tend to fall flat. And an unorthodox “country first” Lieberman selection would reinforce what has been attractive about McCain, and what has allowed him to run ahead of – though not yet enough ahead of – the generic Republican ballot. A Lieberman pick should help with ticket splitters. But can such a ticket hold the support of pro-lifers, conservatives and Republicans? If you’re conscientiously pro-life, you will have reservations about a pro-abortion-rights V.P. If you’re a proud conservative, Lieberman hasn’t been one. If you’re a loyal Republican, you’d much prefer someone from within the ranks. But if you’re pro-life, conservative and/or Republican, you certainly don’t want Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid running the country. If a McCain-Lieberman ticket is the best way to thwart that prospect, you could probably learn to live with it – even perhaps to like it.
As most people here know, I’m a big admirer of Mitt Romney’s. But my ranking concern regarding Romney potentially joining the ticket has always been whether or not his presence would increase the likelihood of a Republican victory in November. Shouldn’t a conversation about the Lieberman option center on the same concern? With a Democrat controlled congress and a scandalously unqualified Democratic nominee, this election has high stakes. Without wading into the thickets of a tiresome Romney vs. Pawlenty vs. Lieberman vs. Whitman debate, I’m a little perplexed over why the Lieberman option has provoked such a dismaying ratio between analysis and hysteria. Kristol’s column today is a remedy to that. It’s not a case for Lieberman, but rather an analysis of what Lieberman joining the ticket could mean. It’s an intellectual rather than emotional response to an important issue. As the kids frequently say in the blogosphere, more please.
