if only Mel Gibson were running for the Senate in Connecticut

I am not a Joe Lieberman fan. For one he made Al Gore more boring in 2000, even during a career high in boringness for Al Gore (from 1991-2000 Al Gore was in a freefall from young energetic campaigner to stiff, chubby politician (and Lieberman still made the ticket more boring or am I the only one who remembers his make out session with Dick Cheney during the VP debate?). Two, he looks like Howdy Doody, an old boring one. Third, he ran for president in 2004 and had the audacity at one point to exclaim enthusiastically that he was in a “three way dead heat for third place” in a primary. And lastly, he coined the term Joe-Mentum, which is a combination of Joe and Momentum. Much like a moral victory, Joe-Mentum requires an actual loss.

But Lieberman’s biggest problem has been his support of the War in Iraq. He has been like Hyman Roth to The Bush family’s Corleones (as I said in my routine in April and Stephen Colbert referenced last week [coincidence?] George W. is Fredo. Now that he is backtracking on his support for the Bush family I expect a Joe Lieberman shooting in a Florida airport sometime before the November election. But if George W. was actually Michael I could see Condoleezza Hagen saying to him, “You’ve won. Do you have to kill everyone?” And George Corleone would reply, “Not everyone. Just my enemies. And by enemies I mean Muslims and Jews.”

But my problem in Connecticut is that the race is exciting, but it could be more exciting. Ned Lamont is a rich guy who is anti-war. Good enough for me to root for him over Joe, but why couldn’t Mel Gibson have been a Greenwich resident and run for Senate. That would be awesome. Rather than blame the war on Bush, Mel would probably blame Joe for it. At which point Joe would give up saying “RIGGS, I’m getting too old for this sh-t.”

But I really don’t care about Connecticut. I care about the Nation and Al Gore needs to run for president in 2008. He is an experienced political animal, but far enough removed that he has been reminded of what he really cares about. And he won’t be burdened by Joe-Mentum.