Sanctimonious
" I made the pont that the liberals had stood with Clinton while the DLC people had deserted him and described the miserable (Joe) Lieberman as a 'sanctimonious prick.' Hillary said, 'Well, he is cartainly sanctimonious,' but showed no eagerness to pursue this line of thought." -- Journals 1952 - 2000 ; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.; Penguin, 2007, page 837.
This discussion between Arthur and Hillary took place at at White House event well before Al Gore was the Democratic Party's presidential nominee. Thus, they were not talking about Joe Liberman as a potential choice for vice president. Indeed, they agreed on a word that, dating back to the early 1600s, has never been a compliment.
Al Gore had picked Warren Christopher to conduct his VP search. Arthur suggested two good choices -- George Mitchell and Chris Dodd. But Christopher picked Lieberman, who Gore would telll Schlesinger had been his 4th on the list. Arthur expressed his outrage:
"Lieberman is not only sanctimonious but a hypocrite -- the 'conscience of the Senate' got there by defeating a fine liberal Lowell Weicker in one of the nastiest campaigns in recent history. Lieberman is also president of the Democratic Leadership Conference, the Republican wing of the Democratic party ...." (page 847)
"Joe Lieberman, though he refrained in his acceptance speech from attributing his nomination to the personal intervention of the Almighty, cannot keep his wretched sanctimony out of the campaign. On 27 August he gave a speech in Detroit declaring that belief in God is the basis of morality and the American republic.One wonders why the Founding Fathers did not bother to mention God in the Constitution. 'As a people,' Holy Joe opined, 'we need to reaffirm our faith and renew the dedication of our nation and ourselves to God and God's pirpose.' Lincoln had it better in his second inaugural, 'The Almighty has his own purposes.' " (page 850)
Schlesinger details phone calls, meetings, and social events where party members discussed their unwillingness to vote for the Gore/ Lieberman ticket due to Joe's being the potential vice president. He names names, something that dispels the myth that it is the left wing of the party that refuses to vote for our nominees. Some say they will vote for Ralph Nader. Arthur, who describes George W. Bush as "a frightened ventriloquist's dummy," suggests that the republican ticket couldn't do much harm in four years in office.
Perhaps the most savage comment on how his friends viewed Lieberman came in a discussion with Philip Roth, who said, "I am considering issuing a statement: 'Mr. Roth is not available forinterviews. He has gone to the hospital to have his foreskin sewed back on'." (page 847)
All of this was from when Holy Joe was still a Democrat, if in name only. In my opinion, he played as significant a role in the election's outcome as the corrupt Supreme Court. I think the world would be very different if Al Gore had been president. I do not think that 9/11 would have happened, for example ...... not because I subscribed to the paranoid LIHOP nonsense that was common back when. Rather, he would have paid attention to all of the warning signs.
I do not rejoice at the death of any human being. That's not to say I wouldn't be pleased to learn of the death of, say, Putin. Or his top helpers, for I won't know until that happens. But it is to say that even in his biggest role as a Democrat, Joe Lieberman was terrible. And he became contaminated by the bitterness that saturated his being after the Democratic Party rejected him.
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