Vice President Al Gore is going to choose Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman as his running mate today.
Lieberman is an orthodox Jew, the first Jewish candidate on a major party ticket. He’s a Clintonesque new Democrat of the abortion rights, gun control, tax cutting variety and he was the first democrat who stepped out in the Monica Lewinsky scandal to say that President Bill Clinton’s behavior with the White House intern was immoral and harmful. The Gore campaign is calling the choice a bold stroke for a New Guard ticket against the Old Guard politics of the Repbulicans.
Joe Lieberman comes out of the ethnic Democratic tradition in Connecticut. One of his boyhood heroes Abe Ribicoff knocked George W. Bush’s grandfather Prescott Bush out of the US Senate in 1962. Will the Lieberman choice work for centrist Democrats and suburban soccer moms to steel Al Gore for the fight for the middle in Campaign 2000?
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Bill Curry, former advisor to the Clinton White House
E.J. Dionne, Jr., columnist for the Washington Post
Michael Kelly, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic Monthly
Michael Barone, writer for U.S. News & World Report.