Joe Lieberman on being picked by Al Gore as the first Jewish running mate: JOE LIEBERMAN: "I’ll tell you a quick story. We had a lovely dinner, the Gore family and my family. And Al Gore said at that dinner, he said, “I want you to know that I decided two weeks ago that I wanted you to be my running mate but I really thought it would be irresponsible for me to try to talk to some other people about whether they thought America was ready for a Jewish Vice President, the proverbial heartbeat away from the presidency.” So I always wondered whether Al did a poll. I think if I were him, I would have done a poll. But he said he called a number of friends. And he said to me, “I called a number of my Jewish friends, and I called a number of my Christian friends. And here was what I found. Most of the Jews were extremely anxious and uncertain about the reaction to your nomination.” He said, “Every Christian friend I called said there would be no problem.” So then with a little bit of Gore humor, which people don’t remember sometimes, he said, “So, since I know that there are so millions more Christians in America than Jews, I decided I could choose you, which is what I wanted to do.” Anyway, that was it. And then it was announced the next morning at the War Memorial Plaza, a big plaza in Nashville. It was thrilling. And Hadassah did something. He asked her to get up and sort of say something. She toasted him at the dinner on Monday night and said you know for her personally, she’s a child of Holocaust survivors, there was really – I get choked up – it was really unbelievable that she was where she was with her husband nominated to be the second highest office in America, the greatest country in the world. And he said to her afterward, you know, “I want you to introduce Joe tomorrow and if you want to say something like that, say it,” and she did, it was really quite moving. So that whole day was really, if you ask people what’s the most thrilling moment, really it was. And even though it ended in the strange way it did, I always say not to re-litigate the results, but you know we did get a half million more votes and it does – it vindicated Gore’s confidence that America was not going to judge me based on my religion. And it’s a wonderful thing to be able to say."