Groveling 101

When Vice President Al Gore announced that Sen. Joseph Lieberman,
D-Conn., was his running mate, many people applauded. Lieberman, an
honorable man, was seen as a refreshing choice that just might help
voters forget the immorality and corruption emblematic of the
Clinton-Gore administration. Having had the occasion to share a couple
of dinners and conversations with Lieberman, I am among those who
respect his honor and integrity.

Since Lieberman’s selection as Gore’s running mate, I’ve come to have
a bit less respect for his honor and integrity. Lieberman has seen it
necessary to accommodate political reality and learn to grovel, defined
by Webster’s dictionary as: to behave humbly or abjectly, as before
authority; debase oneself in a servile fashion. Why? He has taken some
policy positions inimical to powerful voting blocs within the Democratic
Party.

One of those offended blocs is the Congressional Black Caucus and the
civil-rights establishment. Lieberman has come out strongly against
racial preferences and quotas. He also voiced support for California’s
Proposition 209, which banned racial preferences in college admissions.
In a 1995 speech on the Senate floor, Lieberman said, “Affirmative
action is dividing us in ways its creators could never have intended
because most Americans who do support equal opportunity and are not
biased don’t think it is fair to discriminate. For after all, if you
discriminate in favor of one group on the basis of race, you thereby
discriminate against another group on the basis of race.”

That kind of talk earned Lieberman the ire and suspicion of black
congressmen such as John Conyers, D-Mich., and Maxine Waters, D-Calif.
During the Democratic Convention, Lieberman had a private meeting with
Waters and he addressed 300 members of the Black Congressional Caucus
and the Democratic National Committee’s Black Caucus and others. He
backpedaled and recanted, and swore that he’d be a team player in a Gore
administration and support racial preferences.

I sincerely feel pity for Lieberman. He hasn’t changed his thinking
about racial preferences, but in the name of political expediency he has
had to grovel and dishonor himself. A Gore-Lieberman ticket has no
chance for the White House without the enthusiastic support of black
voters. A vice presidential candidate hostile to racial preferences puts
that support at risk.

A Gore-Lieberman ticket also has no chance without the support of the
powerful National Education Association, the teachers’ union. Lieberman
earned their ire and suspicion by coming out in support of education
vouchers. In an interview in the summer 1990 issue Policy Review, when
asked about solutions to rotten public education, Lieberman said, “I am
intrigued by the ideas of vouchers and choice as a way to create
competition in the educational marketplace. I bet such competition would
be popular, and would excite a lot of families, a lot of parents, a lot
of students.”

The notion of competition and accountability is not only an anathema
to the public education establishment but to the Black Caucus and civil
rights organizations, as well. The largest percentage of black
professionals are members of the public education establishment, and
like their white counterparts, they don’t want competition and
accountability. So Lieberman has backpedaled, saying he only wanted to
test vouchers.

The fact that vouchers are favored by up to 80 percent of black
parents, and routinely condemned by the so-called black leadership, is
just another example of divergent interests between that leadership and
the majority of their constituents. Often, when privately funded
vouchers are about to be awarded, 20,000 parents might line up for 1,000
vouchers.

Lieberman’s transformation is an object lesson on how politics can
separate honor and dignity, and political expediency.