MANCHESTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE -- Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut is especially soft-spoken for a presidential candidate. He arrives at Manchester's Engine Company #7 on a Monday morning with none of the fanfare of the typical presidential campaign nor much of an entourage -- just his son, Matt Lieberman, a press aide, and a union supporter. He is quietly attentive as firefighters show him around their state-of-the-art station. Later, when the former vice-presidential candidate and a small group of firefighters gather in the station's kitchen, Lieberman gently probes them about their readiness for handling an act of terrorism. Later, he shifts his inquiry to Manchester's economic well-being and the financial health of their individual savings accounts.

Lieberman, who ran for vice-president on the Democratic ticket with Al Gore in 2000, is an unlikely White House hopeful. A Sabbath-observant Orthodox Jew, he would be the first member of his faith to run for president. On top of that, his combination of generally liberal domestic views and forceful foreign-policy positions are out of step with his party's mainstream. That his views bear certain similarities to Theodore Roosevelt's (i.e., walk softly and carry a big stick) underscores his potential for good or ill depending on your core beliefs. Lieberman effortlessly cites TR, Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy, and presidential candidate Robert Kennedy among his biggest political influences. A common thread unites them: all stood for the principle that in order for the United States to thrive at home -- to bring wealth, health, and prosperity to the working and middle classes -- the country needs a strong defense and a muscular, values-based foreign policy. It's a philosophy that was embraced -- perhaps most vigorously of all -- by Senator Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson of Washington.

You don't hear Scoop Jackson's name all that much anymore; in 1976 he lost to then-Georgia governor Jimmy Carter in the Democratic presidential primary. Oddly enough, you hear it more among Republicans than Democrats. That's because some of his advisers -- former assistant secretary of defense Richard Perle, for instance -- are now among the most outspoken and influential hawks in the GOP. But Jackson, who battled corporations on behalf of workers, would not have been comfortable in the party of Trent Lott and George W. Bush. Rather, if he were around today, Jackson would find a soul mate in Joe Lieberman. In fact, the fate of Lieberman's 2004 presidential campaign will signal whether someone with Jackson-like hawkish foreign-policy views can still wield power within the Democratic Party. Lieberman says the answer is yes.

When asked about Jackson during an interview with the Phoenix, the presidential hopeful openly expresses his admiration. "[Jackson] was a great supporter of the military, and domestically he was a real fighter for working people, for average, middle-class people -- and incidentally, he was a very aggressive protector of the environment at a time when it wasn't yet fully fashionable," he says. "This combination of values and policies really represents and reflects not only a majority of the American people, that I'm sure of, but a majority of the Democratic Party. That majority doesn't always come out in primaries, but it often does."

On the issue of how and when America should confront Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Lieberman is not only out in front of the Bush administration, but increasingly at odds with many of his fellow Democrats. (Democratic Boston congressmen Michael Capuano and Stephen Lynch, for example, warn against anti-Iraq military action.) Lieberman maintains that an increasing body of facts suggests direct links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization. He points to Jeffrey Goldberg's most recent New Yorker account of activity in Northern Iraq as providing further evidence of such links. While more proof will emerge, says Lieberman, Saddam Hussein's actions to date already warrant military action against him on US national-security grounds.

"He's a ticking time bomb for the US," Lieberman says, sitting in a desk in the last row of the firehouse's training classroom. "The case is there: he has weapons of mass destruction, hates the United States, has used the weapons against Iraqis and Iranians, and tried to kill President Bush." When asked about increasing Democratic uneasiness with expanding the War on Terror, Lieberman remains undeterred: "I'm going to do everything I can to rally Democratic support for an anti-Saddam move."

Lieberman, after all, has been through this once before. In August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. A former Connecticut attorney general, Lieberman had only two years' experience as a US senator at that time. Nonetheless, he knew immediately that Saddam Hussein had to be beaten back. "You can't let a bully like that overrun a neighboring country," he says. The first president Bush asked Lieberman to act as the Democratic co-sponsor of the Senate resolution authorizing America to use force against Iraq. When the Senate voted, Lieberman was one of only 10 Democrats who cast votes for the Gulf War. (Another was former vice-president Al Gore, then a senator from Tennessee.)

This did not mean Lieberman was afraid of criticizing the president. When Bush called for the Iraqi people to rise up against Hussein and then stood idly by when the dictator unleashed his Republican Guards on them, Lieberman made a famous speech taking issue with the way Bush handled the war's denouement. The war, he said, had resulted in less than "final victory." Lieberman now contends he's prepared to push both the current administration and his fellow Democrats to support further action against Iraq. "I hope there's not a repetition of what we experienced in '90 and '91, when Saddam invaded Kuwait, where unfortunately too many Democrats did not support former president Bush in what I felt very strongly was the correct policy to push back Saddam," he says. "I know it's controversial, but, to me, if we don't get him, he'll get us."

Another former Democratic senator has also competed for Scoop Jackson's mantle: Al Gore. While Gore moved leftward in the 2000 presidential race, his 1988 and 1992 presidential and vice-presidential efforts sought to capture the center. If Gore runs again, will Lieberman stay in the race? No, says Lieberman. So why is he already making visits to New Hampshire? On this, Lieberman is somewhat coy. "I don't know, and I don't believe he knows [what his plans are] at this point," says Lieberman of his former running mate. "So I have to wait and see." But, he adds, pointing to the early series of presidential primaries, he needs to begin making preparations to run right away to keep his options open. "Anybody who wants to run credibly has to decide by the end of this year," he says, "so they can actually begin to do all you need to do to raise money, organize a national campaign, decide to begin to put people on the ground in states like this -- an early-primary state -- by early next year."

THE AFTEREFFECTS of the September 11 attacks are the first thing on the agenda when Lieberman meets with the Manchester firefighters. A few minutes before the Connecticut senator's arrival, a small group of firefighters sit in the station's kitchen. A television airing MSNBC provides the latest news of the War on Terror. Soon Lieberman enters the station house and walks into a small office hung with large color photos of firefighters at Ground Zero, including the one of a flag-raising reminiscent of the famous shot of six Marines pitching the American flag at Iwo Jima. "We all have to move on, but we can't forget," says Lieberman. Lieutenant Richard McGahey tells Lieberman how some members of the engine company made it down to Ground Zero after September 11. Then he refers to the soldiers currently fighting in Afghanistan. "We have a lot of guys over there," says McGahey. "We have to remember why they're there."

The conversation turns to what the local fire department needs to prepare for terrorist attacks. They all sit down in the kitchen, where the firefighters earlier watched the news. Manchester fire chief Joseph Kane makes his case for remembering local departments down on Capitol Hill. Lieberman asks a few more policy questions, which he follows with an inquiry about the economy. McGahey briefs him on the economic resurgence of downtown Manchester. The senator then shifts the conversation to Enron, the now-defunct energy-trading firm. "Has your confidence in the market been shaken by the Enron stuff?" he asks. "I've got some hearings. We're trying to find out exactly what happened. Why didn't the watchdogs bark?" Although Lieberman's topic is far afield from the usual firehouse talk, the men eagerly offer up details of their investment plans and express unease over the Enron scandal. "I'm shocked and surprised the auditors turned out to be the bad guys here," says Chief Kane.

Later, during his interview with the Phoenix, Lieberman is quick to link the financial prospects of the middle class to his national-security concerns. "The first responsibility of government is to provide security, and the Constitution says we have an obligation to provide for the common defense," he says. "If a political party or individuals running for higher office in a country don't have the confidence of the people on fundamental questions of national security, then it's understandably hard to get people to listen to your other ideas about anything else. We've been at our best as a party when we've not only had a heart and cared about . . . freedom [and] growth and betterment for education, health care, and social security, environmental protection, but [also] when we've supported and carried out a muscular, values-based foreign policy."

When the Enron scandal first broke, Lieberman seemed perfectly poised to exploit the Achilles heel of the Bush White House. That was, until Lieberman learned that many on the Democratic side of the aisle had links to Enron -- including himself. A former Lieberman staffer worked for Enron, and the senator has accepted more than $100,000 in donations from Citicorp, a major Enron creditor, according to the New York Times. This revelation prompted some on the left to question how deep Lieberman's commitment to investigate Enron really is. "Lieberman's been reluctant to go after people that he's protected for a long time," says Bob Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, a self-described "populist" group. "What he does with the Enron hearings will have a lot to say about whether he can clean his tawdry past. With an aggressive investigation of Enron and its ties to the Bush administration, he could turn himself into a populist figure. Thus far, he's run some somnolent hearings that have booted the opportunity." Borosage made these comments before the issuance of another 29 subpoenas relating to Enron's collapse by the Governmental Affairs Committee, which Lieberman chairs. (The committee has already subpoenaed more than 50 Enron and Arthur Andersen officials.)

For his part, Lieberman maintains he's determined to get to the bottom of the Enron debacle. "You need to have rules, and the government has to be prepared to step in and provide the case for more accurate information to investors," he says, emphasizing that the government bore that responsibility in the case of Enron. It's the government's obligation, says Lieberman, "to protect average people, or else average people will get cheated." Speaking generally, he adds that government is an important balance to business. "Experience shows that if you just let them [businesses] go without any rules or any action against bad actors, the air will be polluted, workers will be cheated, investors may be defrauded," he says. "You need to have rules."

Critics on the left say Lieberman is an unlikely spokesman for working people. They note, for example, that he is among those who have received the largest donations from the pharmaceutical industry -- a charge that Lieberman doesn't refute. The senator, who describes himself as a "pro-business Democrat," stresses the contributions the pharmaceutical industry has made in improving people's health. "Pharmaceutical companies have transformed our lives, and we're all living longer and better because of the drugs they've created," he says. "On the other hand, when they overprice drugs, we in government have to stand up and say, `Hey that's wrong. That's unfair.' That's the balance I'd strike, and that's the balance that's best for the country."

Can a pro-business Democrat capture the heart of the labor movement? Bill Clinton did, and labor helped Al Gore win the popular vote in the 2000 election. Martin Dunleavy, the political-affairs director of the American Federation of Government Employees and a neighbor of Lieberman's in New Haven, Connecticut, says that while Lieberman differs with the labor movement on trade and other issues, the senator generally has had "an extremely pro-labor, pro-union voting record." "He's always good on prevailing wage/minimum wage," says Dunleavy, who accompanied Lieberman on his trip to New Hampshire and the Manchester firehouse. "He's always been good on protecting Social Security and OSHA. The kind of stuff that the steel worker or dock worker cares about." Dunleavy recalls an episode from Lieberman's days in the Connecticut state senate that exemplified his commitment to working people. When state employees were fighting for a new contract -- one the Democratic governor, Ella Grasso, said she would sign -- state Republicans filibustered on the last day of the legislative session. Lieberman ordered a page to unplug the legislature's clock to hinder the Republican effort. "He said, 'I'm not going to let you filibuster,' " Dunleavy remembers. "Those are the types of things he's stood up for."

IF LIEBERMAN wins the Democratic nomination in 2004, it would sustain the power of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), which Lieberman chaired from 1995 to 2001, and which helped to elect Clinton in 1992. Some observers believe Lieberman, who is deeply religious and cuts rightward on defense policy, would actually be a more natural DLC candidate than Clinton, who had a tortured relationship with the US military. "I think Senator Lieberman would be a strong candidate if he ran," says DLC founder and CEO Al From, who contends that the Democrats need to win a majority of independent voters and 60 percent of moderate voters to win a general election. "What Joe Lieberman demonstrates is the kind of independence that will have real appeal to rank-and-file voters across the country," From says. "It's a myth that you have to go left in the primary and then move to the center in the general election. I think his orthodoxy and his deep belief in religion is a plus in the South and parts of the Midwest."

A Democratic activist who spent time with Lieberman on the 2000 campaign trail contends that the senator's low-key personality and moral seriousness struck a chord with voters throughout the key swing states of the South and Midwest. The activist recalls Lieberman campaigning in a small Midwestern town, where the vice-presidential candidate and a few aides visited a coffee shop. Before his arrival, Lieberman learned that the town had recently experienced a major plant closing and that many of the residents were unemployed. He spoke to each person in the restaurant about his or her plight, then said good-bye personally to each one. Lieberman, the activist remembers, was a hit. "Most of them were independent voters. They were won over by the fact that he had studied the issues that mattered to them and listened to them about what was going on," the activist recalls, adding that Lieberman spoke to them about his father-in-law, who owned a small business in Massachusetts. "He won these very Christian folks over."

For his part, Lieberman says he senses his appeal to more-moderate voters. "I've been encouraged by a lot of different kinds of people in places like the South, perhaps because I'm identified as a moderate-values candidate, and among moderate Democrats around the country in all sorts of places," he notes.

Won't the DLC-inspired emphasis on moderate and even conservative voters hurt Lieberman's presidential candidacy with the Democratic Party base? The DLC's From argues that only a candidate who can win the center can help the Democrats retake the White House. William Hillsman, a fellow at the Kennedy School's Institute of Politics and chief creative officer of Northwoods Advertising, which has done political advertising for the campaigns of Senator Paul Wellstone, Governor Jesse Ventura, and Ralph Nader, says otherwise. A Lieberman presidential run "would be great for anybody interested in progressive politics," says Hillsman, referring to the DLC as "Republicans Lite." "Then the shell game doesn't work anymore. [Lieberman] doesn't have any appeal to blue-collar workers unless the blue-collar people are up in arms, and they feel [the war] needs to be done harder and more forcefully."

Here Hillsman hints at the ultimate significance of Lieberman's candidacy: Can his party, which moved left on foreign policy in the wake of the Vietnam debacle, contain a politician with Lieberman's views? Robert Kaufman, a political-science professor at the University of Vermont and the author of Henry M. Jackson: A Life in Politics (University of Washington, 2000), contends that Lieberman's political fate transcends the politician himself. "One thing that will be interesting is the battle between Lieberman and McGovern forces in the Democratic Party," says Kaufman. "One of the interesting things will be to see if September 11 changes the configuration of the Democratic Party such that Senator Lieberman can revive the muscular-foreign-policy tradition of Henry Jackson. I hope Lieberman can revive this tradition, because it's important it live on in both parties." On the other hand, Borosage, the populist, downplays the foreign-policy aspect of a Lieberman run: "He's going to run as a hawk, but I suspect that almost every Democrat's going to run as a hawk."

Given the recent questioning of the War on Terror by such Democrats as Senate majority leader Tom Daschle and the nascent opposition among House Democrats to expanding the war, Borosage's assertion seems hard to believe. Massachusetts senator John Kerry will certainly allow his credentials as a Vietnam veteran and Silver Star recipient to come to the forefront in any debate over foreign and military policy; Kerry also has sketched out an energy policy that would enable the US to wean itself from Saudi oil. But it seems unlikely that, as a group, the Democrats will outflank Bush on the war.

Unless, of course, the Bush family's long-standing ties to Saudi Arabia's ruling family become an issue. If it emerges that Bush's history with the Saudis translates into fighting the War on Terror tepidly, then policies like Kerry's energy plan and Lieberman's overall robust approach to the conflict will become positives. The Saudi connection could make Bush's contacts with Enron look like child's play, giving a boost to Democrats who have no known comparable links to the Middle Eastern oil establishment. In such circumstances, Lieberman becomes a realistic candidate for the Democratic nomination. That's if Gore decides not to run. If Gore does run, it's easy to imagine a Democratic ticket that again includes the two Democrats who voted for the original Gulf War: Gore and Lieberman. That election could settle a whole lot more than the question of who really won Florida in 2000.

Seth Gitell can be reached at sgitell[a]phx.com..

Issue Date: March 29 - April 4, 2002