Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman entered the Democratic presidential primary as the front-runner this week, announcing that he is a different kind of Democrat, one that could work with Republicans and find common ground on important issues. His primary opponents counter that this attitude was what got the party thumped in the 2002 congressional races, and that tough opposition of the GOP is the thing to excite voters.

Republicans would be smart to allow Democrats to debate this point for as long as possible because it is so perfectly irrelevant. The current president understands this as well as his immediate predecessor did. They are two very different leaders, with different skills, presentations and priorities. But they both knew that empathy trumps policy every time.

The demand for the voter to feel comfortable with a politician, to believe that he or she understands what the voter’s life is like, is a cultural imperative. In politics, a candidate’s personal wealth doesn’t separate him from the masses, educational achievement does so only marginally and actual career experience not at all. But a drop of condescension, a propensity to lecture or an inability to name the price of a loaf of bread, creates an unbridgeable chasm. Consider that President George W. Bush, a third-generation politician, graduate of Andover, Yale and Harvard, richer than most Americans dream possible and who would receive more from eliminating the dividend tax than most families earn in a year, is embraced by some of the poorest, most-government-dependent places in the nation.

There’s a good reason for this. Just as Bill Clinton knew how to make his case to the public, so too does President Bush. He is forceful, certain and plainspoken in a way that the Dem-ocratic primary candidates have immense trouble copying. If Sen. Lieberman hopes to be a different and successful kind of Democrat, he will worry less about whether he is getting along with the current administration and more whether he is getting along with voters. Whether this is good for the country as a whole, of course, is an entirely different question.