Senator Joseph Lieberman, Independent Democrat: The PajamasMedia Video Interview:

Transcript: An Interview with Senator Joseph Lieberman by Roger L. Simon

September 27, 2006 Washington DC

Transcribed for use only by PAJAMASMEDIA by eScribers, LLC

SIMON: This is Roger Simon for Pajamas Media’s POLITICSCENTRAL. I’m here with a man that I think needs no introduction to our audience. He has run for the Vice President of the United States in 2000 for the Democratic Party. He competed for the nomination of that party in 2004, but, more recently, he has run into problems with his own party. Senator Joseph Lieberman, are you a man without a party?

LIEBERMAN: Well, no. Good to be with you, Roger. I remain a Democratic but I’m running as an Independent Democrat, which in some ways makes official what I’ve been for a long time. I’ve been an independent Democratic. And I’m reaching out in Connecticut across party lines asking people, based on my record, based on the fact that here in Washington I reach across party lines to get things done, to give me an opportunity to serve the state and country for six more years.

SIMON: Correct me if I’m wrong, if I’m not up to date on the latest —

LIEBERMAN: Yeah.

SIMON: — on this. That if you do win — and you’re doing well at the moment — if you do win as an Independent, you will still then become a Democrat, stay as a Democrat and caucus with the Democrats.

LIEBERMAN: Yeah. The critical thing is to caucus with the Democrats because if you don’t caucus with a party, you don’t have the opportunity to hold your seniority in the committee assignments that you’ve got and that’s important to the folks back home.

But, you know, I want to go back. Your question surprised me and it’s an interesting one. So, I’d say, I remain a Democrat but disappointed not to have been nominated by my party and believing that, as much as I am a Democrat, that being a Democrat is not my highest loyalty. My party is not my highest loyalty. My highest loyalty is to the people of the State of Connecticut who were good enough to elect me. It’s to the country.

And that’s why I continued the fight as an Independent candidate. I basically want to give everybody the opportunity to decide whether I should be their senator. I feel strongly that I can do a much better job than either the Democratic or Republican candidates, but in the end it’s not up to me. It’s up to the voters and I want all of them to have a chance to decide in November.

SIMON: Forty-three percent of Connecticut voters, according to one survey that I read, are Independents, which makes them the plurality. In a certain way, by remaining an Independent, like Weiker did —

LIEBERMAN: Right.

SIMON: — you’re essentially representing the plurality of the citizens of Connecticut.

LIEBERMAN: Well, that’s true. I mean, there are about forty-three percent of — the registered voters in Connecticut are unaffiliated. They’re Independents. Democrats are somewhere around thirty some odd and Republicans, twenty some odds. So, you can see, it’s the largest party in the state.

I’ll tell you, there’s something else here, if you’ll allow to just take off from this point. The fastest growing political party in America is no party, which is to say, that the fastest growing group of voters are unaffiliated with either party. And, to me, that’s a market statement, if you will, on the two major parties. People are getting disenchanted with the parties. I think, mostly, for two reasons. One is that each party seems certainly in the primaries to be dominated by the extremes ideologically. And then when they get to Washington, each of the parties seems to basically feel that they’re in some kind of duel in which it’s Democratic against Republican. But then they forget something that’s even more important, which is the national interest, or the interest of their constituents back home.

So, I will say, Roger, that not by choice — my choice was to win the Democratic primary but that didn’t happen. And, therefore, out of necessity, I have become an Independent in this race. I will tell you that I find it to be very empowering and even liberating. And we’ll see where we go from here.

SIMON: Well, that’s very interesting because — permit me to do a commercial here for Pajamas Media —

LIEBERMAN: Yes.

SIMON: — because last night we ran a panel discussion at the National Press Club called “How Partisan is Too Partisan?”

LIEBERMAN: Yeah. Interesting.

SIMON: And the reason we did that is when we were forming Pajamas Media, we conducted some research by the Princeton Research organization. And we had them ask a question that had a surprising answer, but probably not to you. Which is, we asked the voters, how do you feel about being — are you comfortable being described as a liberal, conservative or moderate? And over forty percent are comfortable with none of them.

LIEBERMAN: Interesting.

SIMON: Not even moderate, which you would think —

LIEBERMAN: Yeah. Fascinating.

SIMON: But which led us to the conception — and I want to ask you about this — which led us to the conception that the term “moderate” in and of itself is a misleading term because people have passionate feelings that are contradictory. Like, there are people that are pro-war and pro-gay marriage.

LIEBERMAN: Right.

SIMON: For example, I am that.

LIEBERMAN: Right.

SIMON: Now, these are kind of — assuming generous people, but there are many of them in America that we feel are being disenfranchised essentially by the major parties.

LIEBERMAN: You’re right. I’m fascinated that the people stepped away from the label self-descriptions. Because usually they do answer those. But that says something. And it’s part of what I’m saying in this campaign. And maybe that’s why the word “independent” is better because it suggests you’re independent-minded. You make up your mind issue by issue. And that’s part of my problem — the problem I had in the Democratic primary. I’m a JFK Democrat, if you will. I got inspired into public service by President Kennedy. To me, he represented social progress, certainly civil rights — we’re from the same generation — in domestic policy and a strong principled foreign policy but — a defense policy. And, you know, my record about ninety percent of the time I vote with the majority of Democrats in the Senate but I happen to have had a very strong record on defense and foreign policy and on the specific case, on the Iraq war. And the most alarming reality of the primary was that a lot of Democrats in Connecticut — really over forty-five percent at one poll — said they thought I had done a good job as senator for the state, the country. They knew that they agreed with me on most issues but they disagreed with me on Iraq. And on that basis, they were going to vote against me. And that’s not healthy. It happened to be me who suffered from it. They obviously have a right to do that. I’m just saying that people are independent-minded and we ought to celebrate that independence. Incidentally, I’m talking about the Democratic party. The Republican party does the same on the other side. So, that’s why I think there’s this Independent group growing, unaffiliated, in the middle, that is going to make up its mind election by election, issue by issue. And why not? Why should you feel you have to march down some party’s preordained path for you? It doesn’t make sense.

SIMON: Apropos of all things you’ve been saying, I have to say that when I was standing in your office lobby waiting for this interview, I was very taken by the photographs on the wall that showed you with colleagues of yours that I know over the years have been very close to you. I’m talking specifically about Chris Dodd, Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, people like that, none of whom are supporting your campaign.

LIEBERMAN: Yeah.

SIMON: How do you feel about that? And will you be able to forgive them?

LIEBERMAN: Oh, I’ll forgive them. I probably won’t forget, to tell you the truth. And, you know, this is politics. And it’s been disappointing. But, you know, you go on and, I got to tell you, that as disappointing as the primary results were and the fact that a lot of friends went immediately by the rules of the partisan political game to support the guy who won the primary, even though we’ve had longtime friendships and working relationships — that was disappointing. But it has been in the natural order of things — usually this happens. It’s been more than made up for by others who have said to me, good for you for staying in there. You know, we’re tired of the partisanship. Stick with it, we’re going to support you. And right now, as we speak, that’s given me some confidence as we go forward to November. I mean, I’m reaching out to people based on my experience, comparing it to the inexperience of my opponent. I’m reaching out based on my willingness to work across party lines to get things done for them and to stand up and do what I think is right, whether it’s popular or not at a given moment. But the emotion coming through here most loudly to me is a frustration with partisanship because the people know that it stands in the way to us solving some of the problems they need us to solve for them.

I’ll just give you a final vignette. About, oh, three months ago, the two leaders in the Senate, Senator Frist and Senator Reid, decided that on one week the topic was going to be “Small Business Health Insurance” which is a desperate need of reform in our country. And what happened was that the Republicans put a proposal forward and the Democrats put a proposal forward. And it was like a parallel monologue, two parallel monologues. The fact is that the two proposals were not that far apart. But nobody ever created a process for sitting down and saying, hey, can we work this out? Can we get something done? It was all politics. It was all marketing to their separate constituencies. That’s what’s wrong with this place. And if I’m fortunate enough to get elected as an Independent Democrat, I’m going to come back and really try to be a bridge and maybe as much an Independent or more than a Democratic.

SIMON: Well, thank you very much, Senator Lieberman, for your interview with Pajamas Media.

LIEBERMAN: Thank you, Roger. Glad to be with you. I’m glad I didn’t have to wear pajamas.

(Time ended: 5:25 p.m.)

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