Is there anybody in American politics who is more cheerfully despised by the left and the right than Joe Lieberman?

Tonight's headliner has long been suspect in some liberal precincts for his view that Hollywood helped to coarsen the popular culture. Lieberman muted some of that talk during his unsuccessful run for vice president on a Democratic ticket topped by Al Gore in 2000.

His vote in 2002 for the Iraq war resolution did not set him apart him from other Senate Democrats; a majority of whom joined him, including the current vice-presidential candidate, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden. But today nearly all those Democrats have joined in the party's general condemnation of the war. Lieberman, while finding fault with some aspects of the Bush administration's prosecution of the war, remains a defender of the war effort. He will no doubt reiterate that position tonight.

Lieberman's hawkishness jeopardized his Senate seat two years ago, when he lost the Connecticut Democratic primary to an antiwar candidate. He won reelection as an independent and has since caucused with the Democrats, but there is much speculation about the possibility that he will be asked to find another home in the 111th Congress -- provided that the Democrats win enough seats to hold the Senate majority without his vote.

On the other side of the ledger, Lieberman is far too liberal -- war issues excepted -- for conversatives to embrace him. Example: When the veteran conservative Phyllis Schlafly was asked today how she felt about the convention's loss of its Monday night programming, she answered mock-seriously that she was sorry to have missed Joe Lieberman. When she was told that Lieberman had been rescheduled for tonight, Schlafly became serious: "I thought we had gotten him behind us.''

But Lieberman does have the support of the most important Republican in town this week, John McCain. Tonight he will try to rally support for McCain in the political center, where close elections tend to be decided in this country.