oral outrage has been a hallmark of Joseph I. Lieberman's political career for two decades. His passionate voice and his common-sense approach to many issues are welcome additions to the debate.
Vice President Al Gore, in choosing the two-term Connecticut senator as his running mate, has picked a man with relatively little national reputation or stature. Only once has Lieberman led the news, when he criticized President Bill Clinton for his behavior with Monica Lewinsky, saying ''It is immoral. And it is harmful.''
The Republican convention made two strong statements, claiming diversity for the GOP and tarring Gore for his relationship with Clinton. Lieberman's selection - as the first Jewish candidate for national office and the first Democrat to criticize Clinton - blunts both Republican initiatives effectively. But if Gore's choice is meant merely to inoculate him from GOP criticism, it is a poor rationale.
We hope and expect voters have grown beyond prejudging a candidate based on religion. Vice presidential nominees should be judged primarily for their ability to work with the presidential candidate and to take over in the White House if necessary. Lieberman still has much to prove.
In his public career, he has been an independent thinker, often with a moral edge. As attorney general of Connecticut, he investigated a failed child support system, not only as a policy issue but also from the principle that parents need to accept the responsibility for raising their children. A genuine intellectual, he wrote a book on the subject in 1985. Similarly, there has been a tone to his support for campaign finance reform, for the V-chip to screen out televised sex and violence, and for other issues that has seemed sanctimonious at times and appropriately outraged at others.
He is more centrist than most of the others on Gore's short list, supporting some privatization of Social Security and, more troublingly, questioning affirmative action and supporting a pilot school voucher plan.
The Democrats' job now is to convince voters that Lieberman is a good answer not just to the GOP's past convention, but for the nation's future.
