Sen. Joe Lieberman closes his 24-year congressional career this week — and national politics will certainly be diminished by his absence.
Because Lieberman embodied a rapidly vanishing breed on Capitol Hill: someone who insisted on putting his beliefs and strongly held positions ahead of political self-interest.
Sure, he put those beliefs in cold storage to run for vice president in 2000 — but that’s OK, because veeps aren’t permitted to possess principles; it’s in the Constitution or something.
Otherwise, however, operating on his own dime, he was nothing less than a giant.
Lieberman advocated policies — once embodied by the likes of John F. Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey and Henry “Scoop” Jackson — that have all but vanished from the Democratic Party: domestic liberalism coupled with a strong military and an assertive, bipartisan foreign policy.
He was elected as a Democrat but — appropriately — leaves office as an Independent, long spurned by the party that once sought to place him a heartbeat from the presidency.
Indeed, he was the toast of the Democratic Party after almost becoming vice president in 2000, the first Jewish candidate on a major-party national ticket.
But four years later, as he ran for the White House himself, Democrats turned their back on him for committing the “sin” of endorsing the war in Iraq.
He saw that effort as a key component of an ongoing global War on Terror and, unlike other Democrats, never abandoned his support or apologized for it.
Though sharply critical of the post-war effort, he refused to accompany it with over-the-top Bush-bashing, warning Democrats not to push “outdated extremes of our own.”
That’s hardly surprising: Lieberman never indulged in “crush the conservative” bombast — that is, the kind of attacks that were tossed at him in his 2006 re-election battle.
“People didn’t just disagree with me,” he said recently. “There was personal hatred.”
“To me,” he added, “that’s a cancer that’s eating at our politics.”
Lieberman lost the Democratic primary for Senate that year, but he won in November on an independent line — after seeing many longtime friends and allies work for his opponent.
Yet he immediately announced — without negotiating for any senatorial perks — that he would caucus with Democrats, should the Senate face a 50-50 tie.
Lieberman then endorsed John McCain for president in 2008 and spoke at the GOP convention.
Joe Lieberman, in other words, has always marched to the beat of his own drum, with little thought for the possible political consequences.
There aren’t many like that in Congress.
And now, sad to say, there’s one fewer.