NEW HAVEN, Sept. 8 — Ned Lamont, who this week chastised Senator Joseph I. Lieberman for his public rebuke of President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, wrote to Mr. Lieberman at the time praising the eloquence of his speech on the Senate floor.
“I supported your statement because Clinton’s behavior was outrageous: a Democrat had to stand up and state as much, and I hoped that your statement was the beginning of the end,” Mr. Lamont, then a cable television executive, wrote in an e-mail message to the senator’s Washington office on Sept. 16, 1998, two weeks after Mr. Lieberman’s speech.
Mr. Lamont defeated Mr. Lieberman in last month’s Democratic primary in Connecticut, but will face the incumbent — now running on his own party line — in November. In an interview with reporters and editors on Wednesday night in Washington, Mr. Lamont said he shared Mr. Lieberman’s “moral outrage” over Mr. Clinton’s sexual misbehavior but thought the senator should have handled it behind closed doors before making a public speech.
“You don’t go to the floor of the Senate and turn this into a media spectacle," Mr. Lamont said of Mr. Lieberman’s remarks. "You go up there, you sit down with one of your oldest friends and say you’re embarrassing yourself, you’re embarrassing your presidency, you’re embarrassing your family, and it’s got to stop.”
At the time, Mr. Lamont wrote that he had “supported the moral outrage” Mr. Lieberman expressed reluctantly because he “thought it might make matters worse,” adding that “unfortunately, the statement was the beginning of a process that has turned more political and morally offensive.” He urged Mr. Lieberman to “stand up and use your moral authority to put an end to this snowballing mess,” and suggested that “It’s time for you to make up your mind and speak your mind as you did so eloquently last Thursday.”
“I’m the father of three and the thought that Clinton testifying about oral sex before the grand jury may be broadcast into my living room is outrageous,” Mr. Lamont wrote. “This sorry episode is an embarrassment to me as a father and to us as a nation.”
Ned Lamont's actual letter:
Medina's been pretty good on this race most of the time, but I have no idea how a responsible journalist could spin Lamont's letter into that article.