"When he was in the state Senate he was a very liberal Democrat," says Shays, who was in the state House during some of that time. "But you have to remember, when he was first elected he represented New Haven, arguably the most liberal part of the state. It's where Yale is, after all." Which is why Lieberman was there to begin with, having attended as both an undergraduate and a law student. In 1970, at the age of 27, he won a state Senate seat. Four years later he became majority leader.

After 10 years in the state Senate, in 1980, Lieberman ran for the U.S. House seat of retiring 11-term Democratic Rep. Robert N. Giaimo of Connecticut. Before the primary, Giaimo -- who had feuded with Lieberman -- had gone so far as to warn the party not to nominate an "ultra-liberal" -- which many observers took to be a shot at Lieberman. He had, after all, voted to increase taxes as well as to reduce some penalties for criminals.

Calling Lieberman "an outspoken liberal," the National Journal quoted his Republican opponent saying, "I think my stated views on the budget and economics are closer to Rep. Giaimo's than are Lieberman's." Lieberman lost the election.

"His ideology has since gotten more to the center," Shays says. "You could probably say that about a lot of us" former state representatives.

During this time, Lieberman's 16-year first marriage -- which began while he was in law school -- came apart. He and the mother of his three children soon divorced, by all accounts amicably. Beset soon after with names and numbers of eligible nice Jewish girls, he put them in a drawer until he decided he was ready.

In 1982, Lieberman began a campaign for state attorney general. He also decided he was ready to start dating again. On Easter Sunday, he called one of the women on the scraps of paper, Hadassah Tucker, an executive at Pfizer Corp. and the child of a Holocaust survivor born in Czechoslovakia. According to an interview with the Washington Jewish Week, Lieberman decided to call her because he thought it would be fascinating to date someone named Hadassah -- also the name of the Women's Zionist Organization of America. The two soon married and eventually had a daughter.

In November, Lieberman became attorney general. Here is when his media savvy came more into play. In the state Senate, Shays explains, Lieberman "didn't have to work in the limelight -- he already got attention as majority leader. But as attorney general he was competing with the governor and others. And the bottom line to Joe is, he knows the press is the way he can get things done. When he was attorney general, he used the press to highlight things he thought were important. It's not unlike what he's done in the Senate. He's very effective at being on the cutting edge on a lot of issues."

A New York Times profile from his attorney general days called him "grandstanding" and noted his "high-profile reputation -- showboating, some of his critics consider it." His accomplishments included investigating environmental misdeeds, joining -- rather late, some noted -- an antitrust suit against insurance companies, and winning a different antitrust suit against three supermarket chains, after which consumers were awarded $21 million in coupons.

In 1988, Lieberman was contacted by his old buddy from Yale, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, then chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (and also, conventional wisdom has it, Gore's second choice for veep after Lieberman). Kerry convinced Lieberman to set his sights on the Senate seat of Lowell P. Weicker Jr., a three-term liberal Republican in the U.S. Senate.

He threw his hat into the ring and trailed badly in the polls until he started running an ad created by Carter Eskew, now a key Gore adviser, depicting Weicker as a big sleeping cartoon bear, "'Zzzzzs" floating from a cartoon cave.

"Lowell Weicker is like a big bear," said the narrator. "On things that matter to him personally, he will always growl, but sometimes when it matters, he is sleeping ... Could it make a difference if Joe Lieberman was fighting for us in the Senate? Do bears sleep in the woods?"

It was jocular negativity -- an area where Bush has proven to be quite adept and Gore ham-handed.

"I don't know what Mr. Lieberman is, and I don't think anyone else does either," Weicker said of his opponent's political views. "He dashes here and there just so he can be in opposition to Lowell Weicker ... This man is zigzagging all over the place. Whoever his supporters are they must be scratching their heads."

They might still be scratching. Lieberman squeaked out a victory in 1988 by about 10,000 votes, and has since been reelected by a margin approximately 35 times that. (Only token opposition faces him this November, where -- as is permitted in some states -- Lieberman can run simultaneously for reelection as senator and election as vice president.)

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