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--> --> Lieberman's gratitude clears path for Gore By Roger Simon MANCHESTER, N.H. - It is very difficult to run for president when you are your own second choice, but Joe Lieberman is trying it out. He has declared he will not run if Al Gore runs again. Gore won't say what he will do, though Lieberman hopes and believes Gore will let him know by the end of the year. And one political operative close to both men tells me that Gore has promised to announce his intentions by the "end of the summer." (Though he did not say which summer.) The two men also "Blackberry" to each other a number of times each week, a Lieberman aide said. But not knowing what Gore will do puts Lieberman in a difficult position. He really wants to run, and he certainly appears to have enjoyed his 2000 campaign a lot more than Gore did. Lieberman's decision to stand aside for Gore, however, stems from something rare in politics: Genuine gratitude. Gore chose Lieberman as his running mate, which represented - as Lieberman repeats at almost every campaign stop - "the first time a Jewish-American was placed on a national ticket." Lieberman is grateful for that, and if Gore wants a second chance at the presidency - and a number of modern presidents ran and lost before they ran and won, including Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush - Lieberman will stand down. But because Gore may not run and because presidential campaigning has become a permanent process, Lieberman found himself making speeches in New Hampshire on St. Patrick's Day, going through a mercifully small repertoire of his own Irish jokes and enduring the jokes of others. One of the Democratic gubernatorial candidates made an unfunny joke about how Lieberman should not be called "O'Lieberman" on St. Patrick's Day, but "Oy'Lieberman" - and Lieberman laughed dutifully. In praising Lieberman at a dinner he keynoted in Concord, several Granite Staters said that Lieberman comes from the "neighboring" state of Connecticut. The next day, Lieberman said jokingly to a group in Manchester, "Don't forget I'm your third senator," to which one person replied, "You'll have to get in line." A glance at the map reveals that Massachusetts actually intervenes between Connecticut and New Hampshire, and the Bay State's Sen. John Kerry - who also has designs on the presidency - figures if New Hampshire adopts anybody as a favorite son, it ought to be him. Howard Dean, governor of truly neighboring Vermont, also has been spending a lot of time in New Hampshire recently, which means he, too, must want to be president. (If he just wanted to look at pretty scenery, he could stay home.) Though Vermont has a population smaller than a number of American cities (about 609,000) and might not be thought the most powerful launching pad to the White House, Dean hopes that by standing to the left of all the moderate Democrats packed together in the center, he might stand out. Lieberman, who has been strong on defense and likes to talk about values - he was vigorous in attacking Bill Clinton over his affair with Monica Lewinsky - hopes to stand slightly to the right of the pack. The real problem for the Democrats is that no matter where they stand, they have to stand against a very popular president in order to win the White House. And Lieberman was no slouch in attacking George Bush on Sunday. "When we believe, as I do, that President Bush is providing principled leadership in the war on terrorism, we should stand with him," Lieberman said. "But when the president does some things we think are wrong, we've got to have the courage and love for our country to stand up and say, 'You are wrong!'" Lieberman then listed a number of things that he said were wrong, including a "fiscally irresponsible tax cut," the imperiling of the Social Security trust fund, the lack of a good prescription drug program for seniors and corporate greed. The audience roared its approval, and Lieberman, surrounded afterward by well-wishers sporting green carnations, certainly looked like a man who wanted to take to the national stage. But until Al Gore says yes or no, Lieberman doesn't know if his own campaign is the real thing or just more political blarney. Roger Simon is a syndicated columnist for the Baltimore Sun. Email your... Technical questions & comments to: WebMaster Daily Tidings editorial comments & questions to: Editor Visit our other Oregon Newspapers... | Albany Democrat-Herald | Ashland Daily Tidings | Corvallis Gazette-Times | | Lebanon Express | Newport News-Times | Springfield News | Cottage Grove Sentinel | Ashland Daily Tidings 1661 Siskiyou Blvd. Ashland, OR 97520 Telephone 541-482-3456 © Copyright 2001 Lee Northwest Publishing