Centered: Joe Lieberman
Written and directed by Jonathan Gruber
Unrated
Runtime: 1 hour, 17 minutes
In select theaters March 18 and 19

by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor

Centered: Joe Lieberman opens with clips of the January 6, 2021 insurrection attempt by supporters of President Trump and then transitions into talking about how valuable it is for Democrats and Republicans to “cross the aisle” and “find common ground,” using the film’s subject as one such example. However, after seeing over an hour of Lieberman’s history, including his personal recollections, the definition of “centrism” being used here is the kind where Democrats choose to support right wing policies and Republicans get what they want. Which only further shifts the two party system in this country rightward.

While not everything Lieberman did was outright awful, it is interesting to see what things this idealized portrait thinks are worth celebrating and what things are entirely omitted. After recapping his education and early career in state-level politics, the film chronologically follows Lieberman to the 1988 election for one of Connecticut’s seats in the Senate, where Lieberman defeated Republican Lowell Weicker by attacking him from the right. Lieberman talks about supporting President Reagan’s foreign policy, including the invasion of Grenada and the 1986 bombing of Libya as one way he made inroads with Republicans. The film neglects to mention that he was supported in his campaign by conservative Republicans like National Review founder William F. Buckley, Jr. and others, who wanted Weicker out of the Senate.

This pattern continues throughout Lieberman’s career. In an echo of everything that has happened since, Lieberman cautioned his own presidential ticket on moving too far to the left when he ran as Al Gore’s vice presidential candidate in 2000, saying it would cost more votes than it would gain. This is the same chorus heard during the 2016 and 2024 elections, both of which Democrats lost the electoral college. After 9/11, Lieberman spent a lot of his time with fellow Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, calling themselves the Three Amigos. Because when you all support the use of American military force to intervene overseas, what are disagreements about social policies like abortion and other rights to get in the way? Again, the “centrist” definition of compromise is giving up things you want and getting nothing in return.

Lieberman continued to slide right, becoming a one-man opposition to a public option for healthcare during the passing of the Affordable Care Act. Even in interviews conducted for this documentary, the former Senator chalks his opposition to the Act to it being “bad for America” and making the national debt worse, while critics of Lieberman cite the headquarters of several major insurance companies being in Connecticut. While the film argues that this shows Lieberman’s integrity, what it really demonstrates is oligarchy by the political ruling class. Lieberman held elected office from 1971 through 2013, a forty-two-year career whose legacy is forever tied to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the War on Terror, which eroded rights for American citizens at home and costly intervention abroad.

The film does cover some of his post-Senate career as well, mostly championing his involvement with the No Labels organization. The documentary is silent on Lieberman introducing Betsy DaVos for her confirmation hearing as Trump’s Secretary of Education in 2017 or his failure to disclose that the law firm he was part of–Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman–had done extensive work for Donald Trump from 2001 and as recently as during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Given his support for executive power, especially in regards to interventionist military policies and surveillance at home and abroad, there is no doubt in my mind that Joe Lieberman is as essential to America’s rightward slide as any average long-serving Republican politician, if not more. The political class continues to exist as a way to protect the interests of the wealthy over average, working-class Americans, and even this documentary’s careful parsing of Lieberman’s career still manages to show that threat hiding in plain sight. Real centrism is bottom-up not top-down. Centrism from the top is just preserving the status quo, making Lieberman one of the most conservative politicians of all time.

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