I was sorry to learn of the sudden death of 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Lieberman. But his long and stormy career did offer some important lessons about party loyalty, which I wrote about at New York:
Joe Lieberman was active in politics right up to the end. The former senator was the founding co-chair of the nonpartisan group No Labels, which is laying the groundwork for a presidential campaign on behalf of a yet-to-be-identified bipartisan “unity ticket.” Lieberman did not live to see whether No Labels will run a candidate. He died on Wednesday at 82 due to complications from a fall. But this last political venture was entirely in keeping with his long career as a self-styled politician of the pragmatic center, which often took him across party boundaries.
Lieberman’s first years in Connecticut Democratic politics as a state legislator and then state attorney general were reasonably conventional. He was known for a particular interest in civil rights and environmental protection, and his identity as an observant Orthodox Jew also drew attention. But in 1988, the Democrat used unconventional tactics in his challenge to Republican U.S. senator Lowell Weicker. Lieberman positioned himself to the incumbent’s right on selected issues, like Ronald Reagan’s military operations against Libya and Grenada. He also capitalized on longtime conservative resentment of his moderate opponent, winning prized endorsements from William F. and James Buckley, icons of the right. Lieberman won the race narrowly in an upset.
Almost immediately, Senator Lieberman became closely associated with the Democratic Leadership Council. The group of mostly moderate elected officials focused on restoring the national political viability of a party that had lost five of the six previous presidential elections; it soon produced a president in Bill Clinton. Lieberman became probably the most systematically pro-Clinton (or in the parlance of the time, “New Democrat”) member of Congress. This gave his 1998 Senate speech condemning the then-president’s behavior in the Monica Lewinsky scandal as “immoral” and “harmful” a special bite. He probably did Clinton a favor by setting the table for a reprimand that fell short of impeachment and removal, but without question, the narrative was born of Lieberman being disloyal to his party.
Perhaps it was his public scolding of Clinton that convinced Al Gore, who was struggling to separate himself from his boss’s misconduct, to lift Lieberman to the summit of his career. Gore tapped the senator to be his running mate in the 2000 election, making him the first Jewish vice-presidential candidate of a major party. He was by all accounts a disciplined and loyal running mate, at least until that moment during the Florida recount saga when he publicly disclaimed interest in challenging late-arriving overseas military ballots against the advice of the Gore campaign. You could argue plausibly that the ticket would have never been in a position to potentially win the state without Lieberman’s appeal in South Florida to Jewish voters thrilled by his nomination to become vice-president. But many Democrats bitter about the loss blamed Lieberman.
As one of the leaders of the “Clintonian” wing of his party, Lieberman was an early front-runner for the 2004 presidential nomination. A longtime supporter of efforts to topple Saddam Hussein, Lieberman had voted to authorize the 2003 invasion of Iraq, like his campaign rivals John Kerry and John Edwards and other notable senators including Hillary Clinton. Unlike most other Democrats, though, Lieberman did not back off this position when the Iraq War became a deadly quagmire. Ill-aligned with his party to an extent he did not seem to perceive, his presidential campaign quickly flamed out, but not before he gained enduring mockery for claiming “Joe-mentum” from a fifth-place finish in New Hampshire.
Returning to the Senate, Lieberman continued his increasingly lonely support for the Iraq War (alongside other heresies to liberalism, such as his support for private-school education vouchers in the District of Columbia). In 2006, Lieberman drew a wealthy primary challenger, Ned Lamont, who soon had a large antiwar following in Connecticut and nationally. As the campaign grew heated, President George W. Bush gave his Democratic war ally a deadly gift by embracing him and kissing his cheek after the State of the Union Address. This moment, memorialized as “The Kiss,” became central to the Lamont campaign’s claim that Lieberman had left his party behind, and the challenger narrowly won the primary. However, Lieberman ran against him in the general election as an independent, with significant back-channel encouragement from the Bush White House (which helped prevent any strong Republican candidacy). Lieberman won a fourth and final term in the Senate with mostly GOP and independent votes. He was publicly endorsed by Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani, among others from what had been the enemy camp.
The 2006 repudiation by his party appeared to break something in Lieberman. This once-happiest of happy political warriors, incapable of holding a grudge, seemed bitter, or at the very least gravely offended, even as he remained in the Senate Democratic Caucus (albeit as formally independent). When his old friend and Iraq War ally John McCain ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, Lieberman committed a partisan sin by endorsing him. His positioning between the two parties, however, still cost him dearly: McCain wanted to choose him as his running mate, before the Arizonan’s staff convinced him that Lieberman’s longtime pro-choice views and support for LGBTQ rights would lead to a convention revolt. The GOP nominee instead went with a different “high-risk, high-reward” choice: Sarah Palin.
After Barack Obama’s victory over Lieberman’s candidate, the new Democratic president needed every Democratic senator to enact the centerpiece of his agenda, the Affordable Care Act. He got Lieberman’s vote — but only after the senator, who represented many of the country’s major private-insurance companies, forced the elimination of the “public option” in the new system. It was a bitter pill for many progressives, who favored a more robust government role in health insurance than Obama had proposed.
By the time Lieberman chose to retire from the Senate in 2012, he was very near to being a man without a party, and he reflected that status by refusing to endorse either Obama or Mitt Romney that year. By then, he was already involved in the last great project of his political career, No Labels. He did, with some hesitation, endorse Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in 2016. But his long odyssey away from the yoke of the Democratic Party had largely landed him in a nonpartisan limbo. Right up until his death, he was often the public face of No Labels, particularly after the group’s decision to sponsor a presidential ticket alienated many early supporters of its more quotidian efforts to encourage bipartisan “problem-solving” in Congress.
Some will view Lieberman as a victim of partisan polarization, and others as an anachronistic member of a pro-corporate, pro-war bipartisan elite who made polarization necessary. Personally, I will remember him as a politician who followed — sometimes courageously, sometimes foolishly — a path that made him blind to the singular extremism that one party has exhibited throughout the 21st century, a development he tried to ignore to his eventual marginalization. But for all his flaws, I have no doubt Joe Lieberman remained until his last breath committed to the task he often cited via the Hebrew term tikkun olam: repairing a broken world.
salvation is by grace through faith it is a gift of God. Baptism is an outward expression of your faith. The only problem I have with a person not being baptized or the “silent witness”. If I had to go to court and my witness was silent, what good would they be for me. But in those regards in the political realm your faith does you no good except for your personal decisions. It is in our coutries best interest that we have biblical dialogue to the politics of our country.
Jason:
In case you or other commenters are still reading, it’s beginning to dawn on me that what I should have said in the original post is that full immersion baptism is central to Baptist “identity,” not to doctrine. Certainly when I was growing up in the First Baptist Church of LaGrange, Georgia, the practice of full immersion, age-of-consent baptism (not to mention the presence of a baptismal fount right behind the centrally located pulpit) is what most notably separated us from our Methodist and Presbyterian brethren and rivals.
Nowadays, perhaps (as I infer from your last comment) denominational affiliation is more fluid, what with mixed marriages and frequent “conversions” and a general weakening of ancentral connections to particular houses of worship. And obviously, issues like biblical inerrancy and moral theology provide sharper divisions among Protestant denominations than in the past. So maybe “Baptist identity” is less tied up in a particular form of baptism than before. Considering that a hard-line position on separation of church and state also used to be central to Baptist identity (it certainly was when I was growing up), maybe my view of the denomination is simply a bit out of date.
In any event, thanks to all for a stimulating discussion.
One final thing, Ed, since I’ve grown up Baptist and am in Greenville, South Carolina, I can tell you I’ve met plenty of folks who have come from paedo Baptist backgrounds (Presbyterian, Episcopalian come to mind of actual individuals) who attend for years who choose not to be baptized by immersion in a Southern Baptist church.
No one thinks any less of them, they just realize that is a matter of conscious and leave it at that. I can quickly think of some faithful people, especially to their particular church, who have been for years, who just aren’t members due to where their conscious leads them on baptism.
And it works in reverse to. I know a chairman of a local college’s political science department who would make a fine church officer in a Presbyterian church he attends, but refuses nominations to such because of where his convictions are on particular points of Presbyterian doctrine.
Okay, Baptists, I surrender on the theological point about the relationship of baptism to salvation, and apologize for the error, which was based less on sheer ignorance than on a misunderstanding of the famous Baptist preoccupation with the validity of different forms of baptism. I really am surprised to learn from Jason that there are Southern Baptist churches that accept infant baptism as valid.
I would hope that you might acknowledge that my mistake has virtually no bearing on the political point I was trying to make: that having chosen to identify himself as a Baptist, John McCain’s rather casual attitude towards baptism as an option based on one’s “spiritual needs” is jarring, and will be perceived as such by South Carolina Baptists.
On two small points raised by Jason, yes, I’m aware there’s no organic connection between continental Anabaptists and Anglo-American Baptists, unless you get into the weeds of the Tudor-era Strangers’ Church and so forth. That’s why I called them “theological” ancestors. But without question, I stumbled by attaching an active verb to the word “salvation.”
Thanks for commenting.
Ed Kilgore
I hate to beat a dead horse, but your correction didn’t amount to much.
In the essay you say: “Well, you’d think anyone who’s been attending a Baptist Church for 15 years might have caught wind of the fact that the denomination, as its name suggests, believes rather adamantly that baptism is necessary for salvation, a reasonably important “spiritual need” by most measurements.”
In your correction you say: “I may have erred by not making it clear that Baptists do not consider baptism sufficient for salvation”.
It’s not that you “may have erred.” You did err. And your tone was snide and condescending.
You have been corrected by many Baptists, and yet your admission was sheepish and half-hearted.
I am a Baptist pastor, and can tell you that despite our name, we Baptists actually have a “lower” view of Baptist than many denomiations.
Please, do some research before you write things. Your voice is powerful, so don’t abuse it with ignorance. Just learn before you write.
Wow, you don’t know much about either Baptist history or theology.
Southern Baptists most certainly do not require immersion baptism (credo baptism) for recognition of salvation. Many Southern Baptist churches do not accept paedo baptism as sufficient baptism, and as such will not allow a person to become a member of a church, but that only means that individual cannot vote in church matters. A lack of recognition of credo baptism means that they will pass no judgment on a person’s salvation. Not e that since Southern Baptist churches are largely independent of one another, some Southern Baptist churches will in fact accept paedo Baptism, it varies on a case by case basis.
Anabaptists are in no way related to modern Baptists. Anabaptists were continental. Modern Baptists came from an entirely different strain of independents in England in the 17th century.
You said, “Baptists actually differ on whether it is possible to achieve salvation without baptism, but certainly reject McCain’s apparent idea that it’s optional if you want to be a Baptist in any meaningful sense of the term.”
Oh Southern Baptists most certainly do not differ on this at all. And besides, no Southern Baptist worth his salt would ever write the phrase “achieve salvation” as that borders on an acknowledgment of works salvation. They would say “receive salvation”.
As far as Sen. McCain’s idea on being a Baptist, you need to ask is he a voting member of that church, and if so, did that particular church believe that credo baptism was a prerequisite for joining that particular body, as one does not become a member of the denomination at large. Churches are members of the Souther Baptist convention, but individuals are members of particular churches.
Ed–You’re correct that believer’s baptism by immersion is a requirement for admission into the Baptist fellowship. But this Southern Baptist turned Presbie is still bothered by the notion that it is somehow essential to salvation, and I’m honestly surprised that you learned that growing up. Baptism is a human ritual; to make salvation dependent on a human ritual controlled by the church is to deny God’s sovereignty, and further veers dangerously close to the notion that a person can save herself. To the Southern Baptists who taught me, there is no mediator but Jesus Christ; what God does through Christ isn’t dependent on anything a church or an individual does.
That said, I’d hardly be surprised if there were some Baptists who feel differently; after all, there are at least 57 different varieties of ’em.
Er, well, not according to the denomination in question (the Southern Baptist Convention). They require baptism for membership in the local church, but make a distinction between individual local churches and the “church” as “Body of Christ”. This second, larger sense of the word “church” is made up of all redeemed persons (even if they’re not members of Baptist local church congregations, and even if they’re not Baptists!).
(Again referencing the statement of faith I linked to earlier, section VI “The Church”.)
So no, John McCain probably doesn’t qualify for membership in the local church at which he attends. But neither he nor his church nor the denomination to which it is affiliated “believe[] rather adamantly that baptism is necessary for salvation”.
As an aside, I’m curious — could you point me at a Baptist statement of faith (or similar) that claims it is impossible “to achieve salvation without baptism”? (This is an aside because we have the statement of faith of the denomination in question — the SBC — and they certainly don’t make this claim.) I’m not doubting you; I’ve just never come across such a Baptist, so finding such a creature would expand my understanding.
I may have erred by not making it clear that Baptists do not consider baptism sufficient for salvation (indeed, that was one of their major differences with the magisterial Protestants). They require faith, after which a believer’s baptism becomes a necessary passage before membership in Christ’s Church. Baptists actually differ on whether it is possible to achieve salvation without baptism, but certainly reject McCain’s apparent idea that it’s optional if you want to be a Baptist in any meaningful sense of the term.
Goodness, I’m not sure where you come by the idea that Baptists believe that “full immersion baptism is indeed the sine qua non for salvation”. For instance, if you look at the Southern Baptist Convention’s website (the denomination in question):
http://www.sbc.net/bfm/bfm2000.asp
The section about Salvation doesn’t mention baptism and the section on Baptism doesn’t mention salvation!
Baptism is one of two “ordinances” (the other being communion aka The Lord’s Supper) that are symbolic and memorial acts.
Paulak:
As a Christian, I certainly agree with you that none of us are equipped to evaluate John McCain’s spiritual condition. But the fact remains that McCain has chosen, without duress so far as we know, to identify himself with a particular faith community in which full immersion baptism is indeed the sine qua non for salvation. And he can’t have it both ways, being credited in a heavily Baptist constituency for solidarity with their community without fulfilling its most basic tenets.
And BTW, I didn’t have to do any research on this subject; I was raised as a Southern Baptist, and am now an Episcopalian. I take both denominations seriously; John McCain apparently doesn’t. And that’s his problem.
You appear to have done your research concerning baptism, but have left out some pertinent information. First, whether or not John McCain or any believer, is baptised by immersion, is a totally personal act. Salvation is not dependent on full immersion, although some churches would argue the point. God’s grace is all that is necessary for salvation and lack of immersion will not keep a person from an eternity in Heaven. That being said, because Christ himself was fully baptized in the Jordan River, and did so in front of a crowd, it is the practice for believers to follow giving their life to the Lord by being baptized.
Secondly, John McCain’s beliefs are between him and God and none of can rightly know his heart or his motives. God knows that.