The recent retirement announcement by Sen. Olympia Snowe is a disappointment to the people of Maine and to me personally. Olympia has devoted her life to public service, and her decision to abandon a race that she surely would have won speaks volumes about the dysfunction in Congress. It has also prompted many people to ask me whether moderates have a future in the Senate.
Olympia will join the pantheon of great leaders our state has produced — Margaret Chase Smith, Bill Cohen, Ed Muskie, George Mitchell. These committed public servants understood that they were sent to Washington to solve problems, not to score political points.
But this is no longer the Senate of Smith and Muskie, of Cohen and Mitchell, and soon it will no longer be the Senate of Olympia Snowe. The change is particularly troubling in these perilous times. With a $15 trillion debt, 13 million people unemployed, oil near $110 per barrel and turmoil throughout the Middle East, there is an urgent need for leaders from the sensible center who realize that neither party has a monopoly on good ideas. The challenges we face will not be met by those who believe compromise is a dirty word.
What has been lost in recent times is a commitment to Congress as an institution, a sense that we are collectively responsible for addressing the issues that confront our country, and that if the institution fails to perform each of us bears responsibility. Just when we most need to function as a team, it appears many of us are unable to see beyond our individual self-interest or the interest of our political party.
When I was a freshman, Sen. John Chafee of Rhode Island, as fine a gentleman as has ever graced the Senate, advised me never to campaign against those with whom I serve. The Senate is too small a place for that, he counseled. Campaign for your fellow Republicans and go to states with open seats, but do not campaign against your Democratic colleagues. It will poison your relationship with them, he warned.
Most senators no longer follow the “Chafee rule.” And, yes, hyperbolic — even vitriolic — campaign rhetoric poisons relationships and makes it more difficult for Republicans and Democrats to work together.
If I had to compress all that has gone wrong in one phrase, it would be “perpetual campaign.” The gridlock in Congress and the hyperpartisan attacks that fill the Internet reflect a politics unworthy of the American people.
The increasing polarization that has prompted centrists in both parties to depart has convinced me that the center will hold only if we put the same effort into unity that partisans put into division. Predictions of a disappearing political center are a warning of a bleak future that we can avoid only by adhering to our nation’s founding principles. Yet I remain confident that principled, common-sense solutions will never go out of style and that the American people still expect government to make real progress on the issues that matter.
Indeed, there are flickerings of bipartisanship that may pull the Senate back from the brink. The “Gang of Six,” which sought last year to produce a bipartisan plan to address the debt, attracted more than 40 senators to a meeting where, one after another, senators stood up and announced that they were prepared to compromise and to take the political heat in order to deal with our unprecedented debt. It was encouraging that this group — with nearly equal numbers from each party — included not just moderates, who usually can be counted on to forge coalitions, but liberals and conservatives as well.
More recently, a bipartisan group of senators convened to discuss energy policy and committed to putting together a real plan for our country.
Just last week, Republican Lamar Alexander and Democrat Mark Pryor organized a debate on the Senate floor in which we urged our leaders to consider each appropriations bill in a way that would help restore public confidence, lead to more carefully considered legislation and restore the Senate tradition of free and open debate. Congress must avoid the spectacle of once again missing the deadline for approving spending legislation, which ultimately produces bills that are thousands of pages, while members are left with insufficient time to scrutinize their fine print and trillions in spending.
The rise of the independent voter ( 40 percent of Americans, according to Gallup) signals a deep dissatisfaction with both parties. The wide electoral swings of recent years suggest that voters have lost patience with candidates who run as pragmatists but then govern as partisans. These trends, and the embryonic signs of bipartisanship in the Senate, give me confidence that the political center will reemerge. That is, after all, where most Americans are.
Susan Collins, R-Maine, is ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. She also serves on the Appropriations Committee, Armed Services Committee, and is a member of the Special Committee on Aging.
Collins is hanging in there and trying to get along because she’s dreaming of the VP spot someday.
“If I had to compress all that has gone wrong in one phrase, it would be “perpetual campaign.”
I agree with what you say here Senator. If you are going to put your money where your mouth is, then I expect you will be supporting Senator Sanders ‘Saving Americas Democracy Amendment. Of course, if you were going to put your money where your mouth is you would not have voted to filibuster the DISCLOSE act to death.
Only if the Tea Party suffers major losses in 2012 can the middle be saved. The Tea Party is so partisan they don’t even seem to think about, or understand the consequences of their own Congressional votes! The Tea Party crowd ” can’t see the forest through the trees”!
Heaven forbid we have a group of people want to follow the Constitution. Is the forest the utter destruction of individual rights in the country? The political “center” is what helped get us in to all of the messes. Vote for this President’s war and as a make up will vote for this other President’s porkulus package.
We have all heard the Tea Party “talking points” before, so there is no need to hear them again. The Tea Party is nothing more than prostitute group for the Koch Brothers interests. Most Tea Baggers, I would bet have never even read the Constitution. What has the Tea Party accomplished in Washington besides making Congress totally dysfunctional ?
You may have heard some of the arguments but you clearly do not understand them. This country is bankrupt. The only way it continues to operate is by printing more money, which devalues the currency. A “middle of the road” Congress and a spend and spend, tax and spend, borrow and spend, borrow some more, print a lot of money President were what got us to the edge (the previous guy did a pretty poor job too). When the currency is devalued those on fixed incomes and low incomes, such as retirees and minorities, tend to suffer the most because their limited dollar has to be stretched even more. If making Washington functional means more debt, more inflation, and more uncertainty than those acting to stop that should be commended. Which 2008 Presidential candidate did the Wall Street elites support the most? It was not the Republican candidate. You throw out Koch Brothers and I counter with Soros, Pingree, Gates, and Rockefeller. You throw out another I will counter with four more. Your paradigm is laying on the floor in a thousand pieces. Hope you find someone with still hands, superglue, and a lot of time.
“The challenges we face will not be met by those who believe compromise is a dirty word.”
Mud season in Maine has a noble purpose, far, far away from the Senate Chamber. Here, Senate
etiquette and rules of political discourse are the rough equivalent to a healthy spray of tire mud. Let’s just keep spinning the wheels of compromise!
After all the prim and proper Congressional vitriol we are either
unemployed or in fear of unemployment. Thousands of polite Washington
smiles and handshakes later Mainers live with tooth pain and suspected need for
other medical concerns for a lack of healthcare… because we are unemployed.. Worst
of all are the protective heart pounds of Mainers when tucking their little
ones under the covers at bedtime. Everybody loves children!
Where did all this mud come from, if not from compromise, hundreds of miles away?
She does not represent the center at all, despite what she would have you believe. She talks a good one about bipartisanship and compromise, yet votes with the Party of No consistantly. She talks out of both sides of her mouth, that’s why she sounds funny.
Well said Senator Collins. It’s hard to find any flaws in your logic; however your
actions reflect conflicted reasoning.
At one point in time I believed you and Senator Snowe to be following in the footsteps of Sen. Smith. Since the 2010 elections those footsteps have become obscured by poor vision and the path you follow is perpendicular to those you conjure in this article.
Watching the Republican Party since 2010 morph into what it was become is the result of a desperate party which embraced an extreme group. Traditionally these groups where absorbed into the party, but not this time, they became the party.
As a result the Republicans can’t control their majority in the House.
The same uncompromising bunch now controls many states and are working tirelessly to restrict voting, disband unions, disallow any kind of healthcare, and add to that their attacks on women’s
rights. In addition these state governments controlled by those unwilling to compromise appear that they are all receiving their directives from a central headquarters. Is that the way our states were intended to operate?
The center was ejected from the Republican Party in 2010. We all watched as the fairer-minded
were berated and driven from the flock.
If the Republican Party is to survive they must purge themselves. Judging by those who are running in the Primary – the time is coming soon.
The party of Lincoln has slammed into the far right wall. I’m almost certain you will find the center again, but not before collapsing. Rebuild, find reason, find a center and find those well marked footsteps.