Lieberman Shows His Serious Side--Most of the Time

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman--best known to his colleagues as a relentlessly serious policy wonk, a devoutly religious man and moral scourge of all things violent in Hollywood--showed up in a surprising place last year.

The usually dour senator from Connecticut appeared at the 1999 “Funniest Celebrity in Washington” contest--and won. His oddly prescient shtick had him running for vice president, with comedian Al Franken at the top of the ticket.

One slogan for the all-Jewish ticket, Lieberman suggested: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your mother.”

The episode is a tribute to the complexity of the man Al Gore has chosen to be his running mate. He has an engaging, personable side rarely seen on the floor of the Senate, where he has made ultra-serious values--political, religious and cultural--so central to his public persona that admirers call him the “conscience of the Senate.”

He cuts a profile in personal rectitude that President Clinton could only dream of. Yet on policy grounds, he has been a soul mate in the Clinton-Gore drive to move the Democratic Party to the center on welfare, trade and other issues.

So in tapping Lieberman, Gore has chosen a close friend who embraces the base-broadening political legacy of the Clinton era while distancing himself from its moral transgressions.

A two-term senator and former state official, Lieberman--like Gore--is an experienced, policy-oriented politician. And like Gore, his low-key demeanor lacks sizzle on the stump. But Lieberman has spent his congressional career reaching across party lines--building ties to the GOP that could come in handy if the Gore-Lieberman ticket is elected.

His record mixes traditional liberal positions--support for abortion rights, gun control and strict environmental protection--with a broad portfolio of other issues in which he charts a more conservative course. Lieberman supported welfare reform, cuts in capital gains taxes, free trade policies and school vouchers. He is now head of the Democratic Leadership Council.

“He feels very comfortable in the middle of the spectrum,” said Sen. John B. Breaux (D-La.). “He doesn’t reject ideas just because they happen to be from the other side of the aisle.”

He has built his public life around a fundamental pillar of his private life: He is an observant Orthodox Jew who prays daily, keeps kosher and usually does not work on the Sabbath. On almost a daily basis, Lieberman has had to decide how to adhere to Jewish law. That challenge will be especially tough during the fall campaign season, which coincides with at least nine days of Jewish observances, including Yom Kippur. He’ll also have to face it if the Gore-Lieberman ticket succeeds: Inauguration day 2001 is a Saturday.

During his first run for the Senate, Lieberman did not attend the Democratic state convention that nominated him because it took place on a Saturday. He sent a videotaped address.

But he does attend the Senate’s occasional Saturday sessions, believing it is his duty to serve the public interest and a responsibility he cannot delegate. On those occasions--such as Clinton’s impeachment trial and a crucial 1994 vote for California desert protection--Lieberman walks several miles from his home to the Capitol.

Lieberman’s wife of 17 years, Hadassah, is the daughter of Holocaust survivors. Together, they have one daughter. She has a son from a previous marriage. He has a son and a daughter from a previous marriage, which ended in divorce in 1982. His first marriage lasted 16 years, but his political life drove the couple apart.

Joseph Isadore Lieberman was born in 1942 in Stamford, Conn. The son of a liquor store owner, he attended public schools and then went to Yale University for his bachelor’s and law degrees. He was elected to the Connecticut state Senate in 1970 and eventually became majority leader. He lost a 1980 bid for a U.S. House seat but two years later was elected state attorney general and built a record as an aggressive consumer advocate.

In 1988, he ran for the U.S. Senate against the popular liberal Republican, Lowell P. Weicker Jr. His 50%-49% victory over the three-term incumbent was the year’s biggest upset. And in the midst of the 1994 Republican landslide, Lieberman won reelection with 67% of the vote.

In the Senate, Lieberman has been a solid ally of many of the Democratic Party’s core constituencies. Environmentalists love him. “He is your basic hundred-percenter,” said Debbie Sease, legislative director of the Sierra Club.

Gun-control advocates say much the same thing: He voted in 1993 for the Brady Act to establish a waiting period on handgun purchases and last year for a measure, since stalled, to crack down on unchecked sales of firearms at gun shows.

Lieberman has also come through for abortion-rights advocates, voting with the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League position 72 out of 74 times.

However, he has been a leader of the drive to make his party stronger on defense, tougher on crime, more sympathetic to traditional values and less wedded to special interests.

He is one of the strongest Democratic proponents of deploying a missile defense system. He supported the Persian Gulf War. And in defiance of organized labor, he voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement and is a backer of normalized trade relations with China.

He has repeatedly mounted his Senate soapbox to denounce sex and violence in popular culture. He co-sponsored legislation requiring television sets to include a “V-chip” that would enable parents to block out objectionable programs.

Defying the powerful teachers’ lobbies, he has voted to allow federal funds for disadvantaged students to be spent on school vouchers and for the creation of tax-deferred savings accounts for educational costs--even at private schools.

But nowhere is his independent streak more pronounced than in his response to the scandals that have wracked the administration of his good friend and longtime ally, Bill Clinton. On the Senate committee that investigated campaign finance abuses, Lieberman won plaudits from Republicans for his grilling of witnesses and his criticism of the excesses of the Clinton-Gore reelection campaign.

“The fund-raising scandal of 1996 was a very real tragedy with very real consequences for our democracy,” Lieberman wrote in the committee report. In their zeal to raise money, he said, both parties “effectively hung a giant ‘for sale’ sign on our government and the whole of our political process.”

The public spotlight on Lieberman shined brightest on his response to Clinton’s August 1998 acknowledgment of an intimate relationship with Monica S. Lewinsky.

Lieberman was infuriated that Clinton admitted only that the relationship was “inappropriate.” Clinton allies awaited Lieberman’s response with great trepidation, knowing that the widely respected senator probably had it in his power to end the Clinton presidency. It would have been devastating if he had called for Clinton’s resignation.

He did not. But he did deliver a stinging rebuke. “Such behavior is not only inappropriate, it is immoral and it is harmful,” Lieberman said on the Senate floor. “It is wrong and unacceptable and should be followed by some measure of public rebuke and accountability.”

In retrospect, Lieberman’s speech may have done Clinton more good than harm because it showed Democrats a way to criticize the president without calling for his resignation.

“I believe that speech may have saved Bill Clinton’s political career,” said Simon Rosenberg, head of the centrist New Democratic Network. “It helped all of us at a time when we were trying to understand what had really happened: Something unfortunate but not something that should take down the president.”

*

Times staff writers Geraldine Baum, Robert L. Jackson, Alan Miller and Massie Ritsch contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Lieberman On the Issues

Democratic Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, Al Gore’s choice as running mate, on a sampling of issues:

Education

* Sponsored legislation several times in 1990s to set up experimental voucher programs, letting parents use federal money to send their children to public, private or religious schools of their choice. Gore says vouchers would undermine public education.

* More recently, backed education reforms that do not include vouchers.

* Voted to expand tax-free education savings accounts to help parents cover education expenses in all grades and at public, private and religious schools--an idea promoted by Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush.

Social Security

* Spoke in favor of partially privatizing Social Security, as proposed by Bush and opposed by Gore. Told the San Diego Union-Tribune in 1998: “A remarkable wave of innovative thinking is advancing the concept of privatization.... I think in the end that individual control of part of the retirement Social Security funds has to happen.”

Abortion

* Shares Gore’s support for abortion rights and voted against banning procedure known by its opponents as partial-birth abortion.

* Abortion rights advocates say he voted their preferred position every time in 1999.

Trade

* Shares Gore’s support for liberalized trade.

*

Source: Associated Press

*

REBECCA PERRY / Los Angeles Times

Joseph I. Lieberman

* Age: 58; born Feb. 24, 1942, in Stamford, Conn., son of Henry, a liquor store owner, and Marcia Lieberman

* Residence: New Haven, Conn.

* Education: Bachelor’s and law degrees from Yale University, 1964 and 1967, respectively.

* Religion: Jewish.

* Career highlights: U.S. senator from Connecticut, 1989-present; Connecticut attorney general, 1983-1989; private attorney, 1972-1983; Connecticut state senator, 1971-1981. Author of five books.

* Family: Lieberman and his wife of 17 years, Hadassah, have had one daughter together. He has a son and a daughter from a previous marriage, which ended in divorce in 1982. She has a son from a previous marriage.

* Quote: “Such behavior is not just inappropriate, it is immoral. And it is harmful, for it sends a message of what is acceptable behavior to the larger American family, particularly to our children, which is as influential as the negative messages communicated by the entertainment culture.”

*

--From Senate speech regarding President Clinton and Monica S. Lewinsky affair

*

Sources: Associated Press, The Complete Marquis Who’s Who biographies