Feature

You Go, Joe

Lieberman teases that his wife is more conservative than he is -- "Hadassah calls herself my right wing" -- and people who know them say she's a strong influence. "A lot of Joe's anti-Hollywood stuff comes from Hadassah," says a longtime acquaintance. "Her 'Joey, darling,' walk-three-feet-behind-him act is bullshit -- she's a real steel magnolia, the iron hand in the velvet glove."

At the Manchester, New Hampshire, Democratic headquarters, TV reporters and cameramen give Lieberman the full rock-star treatment as he steps out of an SUV. Inside, giving a rousing get-out-the-vote speech, he has a larger-than-life aura even as he stands on an upturned plastic box (he later tells me, "I like to say I'm 5 feet 91⁄2 inches, but I think I've shrunk. But Bush isn't that tall. He's lowered the bar for presidential height"). He's looser today, and his rhetoric is more charged up. "The Republicans can't tell the difference between their right hand and their far right hand," he jokes. "We've got a president who has shown leadership on the war on terrorism, but that's all. We pay our presidents to lead us on more than one issue at a time."

Peter Burling, the Democratic leader of the New Hampshire House, enthuses afterward, "This guy is for real." Adds Peter Sullivan, a Democratic state representative, "I'll be leaning toward voting for him -- if he runs."

And so the countdown to Al Gore's decision continues: "Most of the time I think there's no way he'll do it and this is all about promoting his book," says one former aide. "But he's been in Iowa, campaigning for other people, and you don't do that unless you want something back." A financier who stays in touch with Gore opines: "I think the chance of Gore running is at 75 percent."

Under that scenario, Lieberman's out of the game. Or is he? Another Gore confidant suggests an entirely new, and plausible, possibility: "I think Gore will run, but he'll cut Joe free from the pledge. He'll say, Joe, do what you want. That way, Gore would feel no obligation to name Joe VP again."

I track Lieberman down at the NASDAQ headquarters in Times Square, where he's just given a speech, and run the scenario by him. Would he run under these circumstances? "I hadn't heard that," he says, his expression startled. "I hate not to answer your question, but I haven't thought about it." He starts to turn away, then flashes a grin and throws up his hands, saying, "Anything is possible!"