The official Senate portrait of Joe Lieberman.

In a world where politicians are not often trusted to do what they believe is right, Joe Lieberman was an exception. I once interviewed his mother and when I spoke with him in 2010 and asked about nearly becoming vice president, he said it was “all in God’s hands.”

The new documentary Centered: Joe Lieberman, includes the chaos of the 2000 election in which Republicans George W. Bush and Dick Cheney ran against Democratic Vice President Al Gore and Lieberman. The film includes that Gore called Bush to concede and retracted it. Ultimately, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to stop a recount of an election in which some Jewish voters in Palm Beach County, Florida, said they accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan while trying to vote for Gore. The Gore/Lieberman ticket won the popular vote, but with Florida going to Bush, he won the presidency.

The film traces Lieberman’s political beginnings – losing a bid for Congress in 1980, but then becoming Connecticut state attorney general and upsetting Republican Lowell Weicker to take a Senate seat in 1988.

Lieberman, who observed Shabbat, was critical of Democratic President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, in which Clinton first claimed he did not have relations with the White House intern – then admitted he lied. In the documentary, Lieberman explains why he stood true to his values and spoke out.

A strong supporter of Israel, the film includes Lieberman criticizing Democratic New York Senator Chuck Schumer for giving a speech which called for the resignation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Lieberman was primaried and lambasted for supporting the Iraq war. In the documentary, Lieberman says that if he knew beforehand all the lives that would have been lost, he would have been against it.

“The fact that he acknowledged [that] was a pretty big deal for people who know Lieberman and his stance on the Iraq war,” director Jonathan Gruber told me in an interview for this article in The Algemeiner. “When we watched a rough cut of it with him, he looked around the table and said, ‘I’ve never said that in public.’ Then he paused and said, ‘But I’m glad I said it.’”

The film also shows the backlash Lieberman faced for supporting Republican senator John McCain for president rather than Barack Obama. 

Gruber said one of the challenges in making the documentary was getting Democrats to agree to be in it, because there was a lot of resentment.

“People were and still are upset at him,” Gruber said. “They feel betrayed.”

There are emotional moments of Lieberman’s funeral shown. He died at the age of 82 in March 2024, after complications from a fall.

“He did what he felt he had to do from a moral and ethical standpoint,” Gruber said. “There are a lot of politicians these days who know what they should do and they don’t.”

What was the main lesson Gruber learned from interviewing Lieberman and making the documentary?

“You should figure out how to disagree without being disagreeable,” Gruber said. “Discourse over discord, and that a person you don’t agree with is not your blood enemy. People on the extremes sticking to their beliefs, saying if you’re not with me 100 percent, forget it, is really simplistic and now we have extremes on both sides. Joe was one of the early cancel culture victims … because of his vote of the Iraq war. I didn’t agree with that vote. But he was excoriated for it.”

Lieberman lost in the 2006 Democratic primary for Senate but won as an independent. The film shows that one of the reasons Lieberman married his second wife Hadassah was that they were at a similar religious level, and that the Secret Service would accompany him to the synagogue during the presidential campaign.

Centered also includes the fear of some Jews in 2000 who worried that if Gore/Lieberman won in 2000 and something terrible took place, Jews would be blamed.

Gruber said Lieberman told him that President Obama told Lieberman that his decision to run as an Orthodox Jewish vice-presidential candidate opened the door for him as an African-American presidential candidate.   

Gruber, who directed the impressive Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story, does great work again here, telling the story of a noble man who seemed at times too kind for politics, but was quite effective. Also touched upon was the No Labels Party, for which Lieberman was criticized, but ultimately, it did not put forth any presidential candidate in the 2024 presidential election.

Centered: Joe Lieberman is a well-crafted documentary that shows Lieberman’s humor, his guts, and his humility, and should be shown in Jewish schools where many students may not be familiar with the man who nearly became the first Jewish vice president.

The author is a writer based in New York.