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 Senator Joe Lieberman, the Sabbath-observant Democrat-turned-Independent who crossed party lines recently to endorse McCain, the Republican war hero.
Late last month, at the Orthodox Union’s West Coast Torah Convention in Beverly Hills — during a session titled “Should Torah Jews Vote Democratic or Republican?” — Medved and Luchins examined the campaign lineup.
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 naiveté.
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 and said, “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 Luchins is holding out hope for a strong Democratic ticket, the two agreed that McCain-Lieberman 2008 wasn’t a bad idea.
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.
The hope in the McCain campaign is that Lieberman’s endorsement will help give McCain a further boost among independents in New Hampshire, where they have a choice of voting in either party’s primary. Recent polls show McCain making a comeback in the Granite State, where Lieberman joined him to announce his endorsement.
In addition to defending the U.S. mission in Iraq, McCain and Lieberman have taken a tough line on confronting Islamic fundamentalism, especially the mullahs in Tehran.
For Medved, Iran is the only Jewish issue in this election.
“Do you believe we’re facing an existential threat to the state of Israel and the United States from Islamo-Nazi terror?” he asked with rhetorical flourish at one point during the session at the O.U. event. “Or do you believe, as the Democrats do, that President Bush is more of a threat to world peace than the Iranian mullahs?”
Across the board, Medved insisted, the Republican candidates are more solidly pro-Israel and ready to take on Iran than any of the Democrats. “Luchins will say, ‘Jews vote Democrat, they just do,'” Medved quipped. “Like salmon swimming upstream.”
In fact, Luchins, a vice-president of the Orthodox Union, was quite equivocal in his support for his party. Like Medved, he’s switched party affiliation more than once in the past few decades, and this year he’s less happy with the current crop of Democratic candidates than Medved is with the GOP offerings. Saying that he’s “very uncomfortable” with Barack Obama and John Edwards, both of whom he considers “too partisan,” Luchins held out hope for “the centrists — Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and, yes, Hillary Clinton.”
Luchins shot down every one of Medved’s glowing reviews of the Republican hopefuls. “Both parties are a problem,” Luchins stated. “Both are filled with people who are not our friends.”