When Republican senator Olympia Snowe retired from the US Senate in 2013 she bemoaned the entrenched partisanship and subsequent dysfunction of the US Senate in an op-ed for the Washington Post, writing:
"...the greatest deliberative body in history is not living up to its billing. The Senate of today routinely jettisons regular order, as evidenced by the body’s failure to pass a budget for more than 1,000 days; serially legislates by political brinkmanship, as demonstrated by the debt-ceiling debacle of August that should have been addressed the previous January; and habitually eschews full debate and an open amendment process in favor of competing, up-or-down, take-it-or-leave-it proposals. We witnessed this again in December with votes on two separate proposals for a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution."
She left herself open as a reforming force of Congress, but insisted that it would have to be done outside of the institution itself:
"I do not believe that, in the near term, the Senate can correct itself from within. It is by nature a political entity and, therefore, there must be a benefit to working across the aisle.
But whenever Americans have set our minds to tackling enormous problems, we have met with tremendous success. And I am convinced that, if the people of our nation raise their collective voices, we can effect a renewal of the art of legislating — and restore the luster of a Senate that still has the potential of achieving monumental solutions to our nation’s most urgent challenges. I look forward to helping the country raise those voices to support the Senate returning to its deserved status and stature — but from outside the institution."
For the record, the White House and the Executive Branch are indeed outside the institution. It is for this reason that I think Olympia Snowe would be open to, and perhaps even welcoming, the opportunity to join with Hillary Clinton as her running mate in order to correct Congress, and to help heal the divisiveness that has divided and embittered Americans so severely.
Since retiring from the Senate, Snowe has stayed engaged in public policy as a senior fellow for the Bipartisan Policy Center and co-chairs its Commission on Political Reform. In this capacity she works closely with former Democratic senator and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle who is also a senior fellow at BPC. The BPC advocates for bipartisan common-sense solutions in multiple areas, including the economy, finance, energy, healthcare, housing, immigration, national security, and Snowe's primary area of concern, governance.
Coincidentally, in April the BPC published a report titled "Selecting a Vice President: Advice for Presidential Candidates" in which they lay out a series of recommendations and best practices on selecting a vice presidential candidate which includes the vetting process, the notification, and the rollout. (It's perhaps telling that some of those on the commission that put this report out worked for the McCain campaign, including its Senior Political Adviser, Charles Black.)
As a US senator Snowe was perhaps the epitome of a centrist. In fact, it was reported that she and Democrat Ben Nelson, who also did not seek re-election that year, had the closest overlap of any two members of the U.S. Senate. As a senator Snowe supported abortion rights, stem cell research, environmental protections, and strong gun-control legislation, and was the only Republican who voted for the Tax Fairness and and Economic Growth Act of 1992. She was one of only seven Republicans to vote to repeal DADT, and subsequently she was only one of two Republican senators who were endorsed by the gay rights organization, the Human Rights Campaign. (She ultimately announced support for same-sex marriage after leaving the Senate.) She was one of three Republicans to vote for Pres Obama's economic stimulus package in 2009, and was one of three Republicans to vote for the Dodd-Frank Act.
She was one of 14 senators (8 Democrats and 6 Republicans) dubbed the Gang of 14, who defused a confrontation between Senate Democrats (who were filibustering several judicial nominees) and the Senate Republican leadership (who wanted to use the nominations as a flashpoint to eliminate filibusters on nominees through the so-called nuclear option). But perhaps most important to this particular situation, she was only one of three Republicans who voted to acquit Bill Clinton of the impeachment charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.
In many ways, Olympia Snowe would provide the perfect balance for Hillary Clinton. While Donald Trump is dragging many moderate Republicans kicking and screaming to the far right, a Clinton/Snowe ticket would present a stark and inviting alternative to millions of Americans who are thinking their choice in November will be a far right candidate or a far left candidate . Instead, there could be another option -- a unified Democrat/Republican campaign which is committed to not only governing from the political center, but by its very composition establishing a model for Congress to find ways to effectively and functionally work together, whether that's Democrat and Republican, or Senate and House.
I have long thought that as the president of the Senate, the vice president should be someone who has ties with the US Senate, is respected by both Republicans and Democrats who serve in the Senate, and is intimately familiar with its processes, idiosyncrasies, and various personalities. For this reason I think that Joe Biden has been an extraordinary vice president, and perhaps the best ever (and someone I think Hillary should also consider). As an 18-year member of the Senate, and 16-year member of the House, Snowe meets all that criteria. It's also worth mentioning that as the vice president, Olympia Snowe would hold the tie-breaking vote in what could very well be an evenly divided Senate in 2017-18. The question is whether Snowe would be bound to vote for the Administration's position, or be given the freedom to vote her conscience. In this regard, whoever the vice president is may have extraordinary power in passing, or blocking, legislation, but also in encouraging members of the Senate to bridge political divides in order to forge bipartisan solutions.
In 2008 it was rumored that John McCain was entertaining the notion of naming his friend Senator Joe Lieberman as his running mate. Lieberman, a long time Democrat, had previously been Al Gore's running mate in 2000. Instead, McCain, in what undoubtedly was the worst mistake of his presidential campaign, went the other way and named a young independent-minded woman who was recently elected governor of Alaska with a reputation as a firebrand who shook up the entrenched Alaskan political climate. The idea was that Sarah Palin would reinforce not only McCain's own brand as an independent straight-talker, but at the same time rally the party's conservative wing behind him, which, at the time, was not all that solid. In the end, McCain, with Sarah Palin as his running mate, lost the independent vote 52%-44%, and the moderate vote 60%-39%, which would subsequently represent the difference in losing the election 53%-45%. One has to wonder whether a unified McCain/Lieberman ticket might have instead swayed the Independents and moderates towards McCain and consequently changed the outcome of the election.
Hillary should learn that lesson of 2008 and select a running mate who could sway the all-important Independents and moderates, rather than submit to the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic party and select someone who is divisive and ill-prepared for the responsibilities, and perpetuate the pervasive divisiveness of our federal government. So the question is whether Hillary will attempt to corral the few Sanderistas who have vowed to never support her, or instead do something bold to appeal to the growing crowd of moderates in the center who feel abandoned by the Democratic and Republican parties that are moving further and further apart, and who are eager for a presidency that is committed to balanced, common sense, and bipartisan governance.
With Congress's approval rating at a near all-time low of 18%, it's clear that the American people are dissatisfied with the way things are being done in Washington DC. Indeed, "dissatisfied" is too kind of a word, many are "disgusted" and "repulsed" by what they see. The American people are ripe for a bold solution to the problem. Olympia Snowe not only expressed those same feelings of dissatisfaction with Congress when she left the Senate three years ago, but has been working on a solution since then. It's time to put bipartisanship up for a vote in the form of a Clinton/Snowe ticket.
In many ways Snowe and Clinton have more in common than they have differences. Not only do they both share a commonality in being women having served in a largely male Senate, but they were both born in 1947 (Snowe in February, Clinton in August), and came into politics on the coattails of their husbands. Snowe entered politics at the age of 26 when her husband, a young state senator by the name of Peter Snowe, died suddenly in a car accident. She would later run for and win her late husband's seat. Years later she married the governor of Maine, John McKernan, and like Hillary, served as the state's first lady where she was intimately and significantly exposed to the policies and political side of the state's Executive branch. She would later win a House seat, then a Senate seat, on her own. It’s time that Clinton and Snowe, and Democrats and Republicans, embrace what they have in common and work from there, rather than dwell on what separates them.
