Radio host Michael Medved, a hardcore Republican, and political scientist David Luchins, former adviser to the late U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), disagree on just about everything related to the presidential race.
Except the idea of John McCain.
In a campaign that they say is filled with adulterers, fundamentalists, crooks, bigots, and wildcards, the GOP senator from Arizona is the only candidate both men say they could endorse — especially if his running mate were Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the Sabbath-observant Democrat-turned-Independent who crossed party lines last week to endorse the Republican war hero.
On Sunday, at the Orthodox Union’s West Coast Torah Convention in Beverly Hills, Calif., during a session titled "Should Torah Jews Vote Democratic or Republican?," Medved and Luchins examined the campaign lineup. With about 100 people in attendance, they ruminated on which candidates deserve the support of Orthodox voters, the majority of whom bucked the overall Jewish trend and voted for President Bush in 2004.
The two men trashed one candidate after another, until a woman in the back of the room offered the final question of the day: What about a McCain-Lieberman ticket?
Heads swiveled back to enjoy what would surely be another of Medved’s sharp witticisms, as he skewered the woman’s political naïveté.
But no. Medved paused. He’d had lunch several times with McCain, he confessed. And maybe — no, he couldn’t tell about it. It was off-the-record information.
"Turn off the tape!" one man shouted at the video technician recording the session.
Smiling slightly, Medved relented: "I don’t think it’s an unthinkable possibility, and it would be a very strong ticket." Although he’s not ready to give up on the Republicans, and although Luchins is still holding out hope for a strong Democratic ticket, the two agreed that McCain-Lieberman 2008 wasn’t a bad idea at all.
The two men are close friends, Medved noted, "and people would love a unity ticket that would put America’s interests first."
Lieberman, a four-term Connecticut senator, was an unabashed Democrat in 2000, when he was tapped by Al Gore to be his running mate. Since then, however, Lieberman’s vocal support for the Iraq war has put him at odds with many Democratic lawmakers and the party’s liberal base. Last year, in Connecticut’s Democratic senatorial primary, he lost to an anti-war challenger, businessman Ned Lamont, before winning as a third-party candidate in the general election. These days, he describes himself as an "Independent Democrat," and caucuses with the Democrats, securing their control of the Senate.
