This is pathetic, even for Frank Bruni (who I believe has the potential to be the Richard Cohen of his generation):
BACK in 1999, when I covered Congress, I had a kind of crush on Olympia Snowe. Many of us in the Senate press gallery did.
She moved, dressed and treated people — even reporters, and even when we hounded her through the hallways of the Capitol — with an unforced, uncommon graciousness. She spoke with intelligence and almost never with vitriol.
But those weren’t the main reasons we had such soft spots for her. We liked her best for her disobedience. Unlike the majority of her colleagues in the Senate, be they Democrats or, like her, Republicans, she dared to disagree with her party. Often. And she did it publicly, with her votes and her forthright explanations of them.
Even then, in times that were a bit less harshly partisan, this was unusual, and she had limited company, though it included Susan Collins, Maine’s other senator, also a Republican and also one of our heroes. Snowe and Collins offered proof and reassurance: just because you identified yourself principally with one side in the ceaseless fight, wearing an R or a D, it didn’t mean you signed on automatically to everything it championed, to each plank in its sprawling (and often suffocating) platform. These two senators validated the fact that a person’s values, philosophy and priorities are more complex than a political tribe’s often tyrannical orthodoxy. And that the tribe’s package of positions isn’t necessarily coherent, each fitting naturally with the others. Snowe and Collins made human sense. Their peers usually didn’t. Those dutiful foot soldiers marched in dreary lock step with their given generals, infrequently demonstrating any real individuality, any rebel spunk.
Snowe and Collins are moderate-to-liberal people who did what a bunch of right-wing crackpots told them to do 90% of the time, offering futile-but-self-dramatizing resistance the other 10% of the time. If that’s what passes for courage in our society, I hope that meteor gets here sooner rather than later.
JMG
Bruni idolizes Snowe and Collins because their approach to politics is exactly the same as his to journalism.
Linda Featheringill
Snowe is not a moderate. She is conservative but conservative in the older sense. This is what conservatives used to do.
It was mentioned in a thread last night that one of the commenters [Kay?] met lawyers who honestly believed that teaching young people the art of compromise was immoral. That attitude is antisocial in the strict definition of the word. And historically, that attitude has brought down several governments.
My point is that our willingness to work with and listen to each other is probably more important than our position on the political continuum.
Do I think that it will ever happen? Probably not. With the collection of Republicans we have now? No way.
JPL
Bruni, a gay Republican loves Snowne. How many republicans are left in office for him to love?
28 Percent
All I saw over and over again was Snowe and Collins providing political cover for their party to devolve into a lunatic fringe. They’ve kept the myth of the old-school principled conservative alive long after the reality of the Eisenhower/Rockefeller Republican had mummified and joined the pantheon.
Frank
She, like all Republicans in Congress, voted for the Iraq war which has now reached the cost of over $1 trillion. She, like all Republicans in Congress, are now concerned about the deficit that they themselves created.
She was part of the problem.
geg6
The only thing Olympia Snowe has ever done that I find admirable is deciding not to run this year. I don’t know why she chose to do it, whether she is afraid of being beaten by some nut in her own party or she wanted to flip the bird to them by making a Dem pickup highly possible. But it’s the first time I didn’t want to punch her in her sanctimonious fucking face. So good on her for that, at least.
MattF
Bruni is pretty bad, but comparing any columnist to Cohen is a de facto libel.
lonesomerobot
Sure, she’s elegant. But does she have a spine? Because all that graciousness don’t mean bunk when you’ve got McYertle the Turtle, James Inhofe and Jim Demint walking behind holding your train.
And really that’s the question I’d have for any “moderate” – are you a radical moderate? Will you defend to the death your moderate views? Because I have yet to see any of the modern so-called “moderates” do any such thing. When the chips are down, they cave.
jayboat
Preening narcissists will preen.
geg6
@MattF:
Oh, I don’t know about that. Hell, Frank Bruni is a lot of what is wrong with food writing these days, too. Don’t know that Cohen has fucked up two beats with his stupid.
Edited to add: I once went to a lecture given by Anthony Bourdain and someone asked a question about the great food writers of the day, “like Frank Bruni.” Bourdain gave a rant worthy of HST. Of course, that was before Tony got all soft, what with the wife and kid and everything.
Betty Cracker
There is one thing I’ve always admired about Olympia Snowe: her name. “Olympia Snowe” is such a cool name that it almost sounds made-up. I wish I had such a fabulous name.
Jim C
I can’t wrap my brain around this.
JPL
@Betty Cracker: You survived!!!!
Betty Cracker
@JPL: It’s true that I was not ripped apart by angry softball grannies! A couple of times, when lots of plays were made simultaneously, I had to appeal to fellow spectators to help me sort out what had happened, but I did okay, if I say so myself. I won’t be nearly so nervous next time.
Warren Terra
It is quite possible this was true in 1999. I’d not be inclined to believe it normally, but maybe it was true.
You may have noticed that it’s not 1999, nor close to it. The Senate has been transformed by the Republicans into a weapon of Total War, a tool to make the country ungovernable. Olympia Snowe has voted against her party leadership on one issue since Obama was inaugurated – the Stimulus, for which vote she received tremendous influence in sizing and shaping the Stimulus. And not a vote since then, on any issue of even procedural or trivial significance. Bruni can have his damned 1999; the rest of us have to live in the present.
ETA also note that her vote for the Stimulus in defiance of her party leaders may not be her only such vote during Obama’s Presidency; it’s also quite likely to be her only such vote since some considerable time before the Obama Presidency.
Donut
@geg6:
March 4th, 2012 at 8:46 am
My guess is the motivation is a retirement financed by a cushy gig with a K Street firm. If I bet on such things, I’d look for an announcement shortly after the November election madness dies down, but before the holidays get in gear. Just sayin.
Bruce S
Does anyone actually read Frank Bruni?
Groucho48
“The flowers’ll be humming with the hum of bees
The birds’ll make a racket in the churchyard trees”
Claiming Olympia is independent? Oh, please!
Zifnab25
And now they’re going to get crucified for it within their own party. I have a bit of a hard time getting mad at politicians for doing what they believe their constituents want in order to keep getting elected. Ragging on a politician for pandering is like ragging on a plumber for plumbing.
That said, there were a handful of other Republicans that dared to stand on the train tracks, hold up a hand, and say “Stop!” – Lincoln Chafee comes to mind, Michael Bloomberg has bucked the party often enough, Ron Paul has his moments, even Arlen Specter got out there at the end… Maybe if Snowne and Collins had stuck together on the left of their party like Blue Dogs clumped together on the right, you’d have seen a more moderate Republican Senate. Or maybe they’d have just gotten steam rolled and replaced with radicals in the primaries, like Utah’s Bob Bennett or Delaware’s Mike Castle or the aforementioned Alren Specter did in 2010.
It’s something of a lose-lose for moderates. Either go radical or go home. The Ladies of Maine are just getting swept up in the storm, from where I’m sitting.
Villago Delenda Est
Bruni of course misses the point, confusing the personal qualities of Ms. Snowe with the political acts Ms. Snowe took.
Reinhard Heydrich was a very charming individual socially. Polite, cultured, intellectual.
This does not change what he did one bit. Nor does Ms. Snowe’s personal charm and grace.
The Ancient Randonneur
I like to use the example of Bernie Sanders as to how a Senator should improve a bill in a meaningful, if even in the end they may not be able to support it, or at least support it with reservation. Take the ACA, for example, he was instrumental in seeing that money for rural clinics was substantially increased. Vermont, although fairly liberal, is very rural. But, so is most of the notorious “flyover” country. Bernie got the money added to the bill because it would help the residents of his state and ALL of rural America.
That, Mr. Bruni and Ms Snowe, is how it is done.
ThresherK
I can’t add much here. JMG @#1 sussed out the perfect match of Bruni’s “journalism” and Snowe’s “moderateness”.
Just a request to keep those “Carousel” nods coming.
El Cid
I’m sick and tired of this stupid shit about how it’s a measure of bravery and intelligence if you disagree with your party.
It’s not.
The measure of “bravery” or “intelligence” for a politicians’ actions or rhetoric or policies would in a sane world include the worth of the action or rhetoric or policy itself.
If you dissent from ‘your party’ to push for worse policies, fuck you. I don’t give a shit if it makes you ‘independent’.
If you spew bullshit which diverges from ‘your party’, fuck you. And fuck anyone who thinks that this is admirable without reference to what you’re actually saying.
What happens when ‘the party’ happens to make the better public argument, or is pushing the objectively better policies?
It’s bold to be wrong? It’s smart to be stupid?
I’m so tired of this shit.
I don’t have some sort of coupon of privilege to send my brain on vacation and blankly and mindlessly credit politicians for being ‘independent’ per se.
Unlike our pundit class, I still face the moral necessity of caring what the fuck it is that politician is saying or doing in and of itself — and I especially cannot give myself moral points for cheerily going along with an attitude that Democratic Party policies are inherently somehow conformist and inferior and that by having Democrats recommend more Republican Party positions it’s a good thing.
gogol's wife
Thank you for warning me that when I finally get around to reading the Times today I should just walk on by Bruni, as usual.
gogol's wife
@Betty Cracker:
Seconded.
WayneL
“Snowe and Collins are moderate-to-liberal people who did what a bunch of right-wing crackpots told them to do 90% of the time,”
Much like Ben Nelson.
gogol's wife
Great post title! I heard Audra McDonald sing it live and almost fainted!
kindness
Rather than a meteor can’t we just have aliens land?
I for one would welcome our new alien overlords…
Rafer Janders
Note how, once again, Bruni manages to pull a “both sides do it!” from out of his hat:
That’s the message gleaned from the relative homogeneity of a party’s leading candidates, who squeeze themselves into tidy, unyielding boxes and insist that we do likewise. Rare is the Democrat of plausible national ambition who tangles in a tough, meaningful way with labor unions or environmentalists, groups that President Obama has been loath to cross. Disappointing them jeopardizes the campaign infantry and financial contributions they provide, and as the sway of interest groups rises, the fealty of politicians to the ones in their corner grows with it. Rare is the Republican of plausible national ambition who doesn’t kowtow to religious conservatives, a spectacle on florid display during the Republican primaries, including last week, when Mitt Romney signaled support for the Blunt amendment just before Senate Democrats — with an assist from Snowe — defeated it.
Because, yes, Democrats making commmon cause with environmentalists and labor unions is EXACTLY THE SAME as Republicans making common cause with sex perverts who want to take away womens’ right to contraception.
And, of course, there’s no way that Democratic politicians would support environmentalism and labor unions because they actually agree with those positions. Because the reason they became Democrats in the first place is their concern for the environment and the continued sucess of the working and middle class in our economy. Oh no! It must be the big campaign contributions, those big fat dollars that Greenpeace and the SEIU command!
Amanda
Way back in the day (late 1980s-early 1990s) Olympia Snowe was the co-chair of the Congressional Women’s Caucus (with Pat Schroeder) and the two of them with the bipartisan members of the Caucus, found out that women were not a part of standard health care research at NIH (thus calling into question the safety and efficacy of drugs tested only on men) — and the forced that to change. So I give Snowe credit for this, as many members of her party no doubt could not have cared less and she probably ruffled some feathers, but other than this example I can’t think of other examples when she wasn’t with her actions and votes providing a moderate sheen for the growing extremism of her party.
Marc
@Betty Cracker: “Olympia Snowe” sounds like the middle girl in an early Bond movie–the one who gets dipped in liquid nitrogen after Connery bangs her.
(I hereby apologize to Sean Connery, and to all of you.)
Marc
@Warren Terra:
She voted to end DADT, didn’t she? And damn little else, but she did vote for that.
Tehanu
@Groucho48:
I thought I was the only one who noticed the quote. You not only noticed, you improved on it!
@Betty Cracker:
Hey Betty, congrats. My husband has been trying to talk me into learning to keep score for ages but I can’t be bothered — but I don’t have a kid playing the game. Once you get the hang of it (hubby says) you’ll be able to do it practically without even thinking and you’ll enjoy the games as much as before.
FlipYrWhig
@Marc: “Dear God! What happened to Miss Snowe?”
“She fell where she wasn’t supposed to.”
karen marie
“… in times that were a bit less harshly partisan, … she dared to disagree with her party. Often. And she did it publicly …”
Wait, what?
If I get the gist of what this maroon is saying, in less partisan times it was more common for party members to vote on strict party lines. In other words, Republicans have always been assholes, and the reason things are “more partisan” now is that Democrats are finally not giving Republicans everything they want.
I’m not sure that pointing out how unusual it is for a Republican to oppose the party line, or applauding such activity, is going to go over big with the party bosses. It’s an outright admission that Republicans are responsible for Congress’s inability to get anything done – “if we had more Republicans like Snow and Collins, willing to object to the party’s ridiculous positions, the country would be better off.”
Wow. But of course we all know Bruni doesn’t really intend anyone to recognize the implications and would argue vehemently against them if they were pointed out to him
at a cocktail partyon a political chat show.Marc
I think that Bruni got precisely pegged above. He’s a upper-class Republican (on economic issues) who is liberal on social issues. His “reporting” was a sloppy wet kiss to George Bush in the 2000 campaign. Cohen was at least a liberal at some point; Bruni is simply shallow.
nota bene
Wait, 1999 was the year he’s holding up as a golden era of bipartisanship? The year between the impeachment of Bill Clinton and Bush v. Gore? That was when times were “less harshly partisan?” Sure, right, whatever….