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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/opinion/06collins.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
The Senate, Snowe and Dinkytown
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By GAIL COLLINS
Published: December 6, 2008
This week Senator Saxby Chambliss won a runoff vote in Georgia. It’s possible you missed this. Perhaps you were busy — oh, I don’t know, maybe contemplating the unemployment rate or learning to darn holes in old socks or embarking on a promising new career in the booming field of squirrel hunting.
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Anyhow, the Georgia runoff was more important than you might imagine. Certainly more significant than anything Chambliss has done since he skipped a closed-door Senate session on Iraq intelligence data to go golfing with Tiger Woods. His victory means that the Republicans will have at least 41 seats in the Senate when Barack Obama becomes president. (This is actually going to happen eventually. I promise.)
Since it takes 60 senators to force a vote on a bill, if the Republicans stick together they can stop things from happening. Maintaining the capacity to bring things to a screeching halt is important for any party, so all the gang went down to Georgia to rally the troops. Mitt! Mike! McCain! Together again, just like in the primaries, with a stuffed manatee playing the part of Fred Thompson. “If we give them a blank check, they will sign that check and be taking money out of our pockets,” warned Rudy Giuliani, whose total failure as a presidential candidate clearly has not affected his ability to turn a phrase.
And the troops heard their call. One woman at a Sarah Palin rally told The Times’s Robbie Brown that she was terrified that Obama was “going to push a socialist agenda” but that she was sure “Saxby Chambliss can stop him.”
Now Chambliss has been a senator for six years, and his greatest achievement was getting ranked the 33rd best golfer in Washington by Golf Digest. It is highly unlikely that he could stop the president from doing anything beyond making a putt.
But it’s probably just as well that he won. Otherwise, the fate of that 60th seat would depend on the recount of the Minnesota senate race between Al Franken and Norm Coleman, which is going to last as long as the Mesozoic Era. Franken — in a count disputed by Coleman and the secretary of state — claims to be four votes ahead, and the results seem to hinge on a missing envelope containing 133 ballots from Dinkytown, a neighborhood near the University of Minnesota. While I’m sure it’s a great place to live, we really do not want to spend the next six months reading headlines like “It All Depends on Dinkytown.”
Besides, if the Democrats did get the 60 seats, one of them would belong to Joe Lieberman. You may recall that although Lieberman spent the last year campaigning for John McCain (and, as it turns out, donating money to Republican candidates for the senate), the Democrats were so desperate to keep him in their caucus that they caved in to his demands to keep his committee chairmanship. If Lieberman had turned out to be Mr. 60, he would not only have wanted the committee, he would have insisted on being carried to all its meetings on a litter, borne by the fellow senators who failed to appreciate him, with Lindsey Graham running ahead, clashing cymbals.
Above all, you have to love the fact that as things stand, the nexus of power will lie in the Republican moderate caucus, consisting entirely of the two senators from Maine, the Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.
“And Senator Specter,” corrected Snowe.
And Arlen Specter from Pennsylvania, although “moderate” and “deeply, deeply, deeply politically pragmatic” are not precisely the same thing. But I like thinking of next year’s senate as a kind of mythic quest movie in which a Democratic hero in need of a stimulus package or a Supreme Court confirmation is told: “Go forth and seeketh the Women of Maine,” who would both be played by Cate Blanchett.
Olympia Snowe, the senior senator, is widely regarded as one of Congress’s quality acts. In fact, some people might have wondered why John McCain, if he was so desperate for a woman on his ticket, ignored a well-traveled, independent-minded experienced legislator who does her homework in favor of an out-to-lunch moose-murderer who cannot seem to put together a coherent sentence.
“Well, you know, John made the decision he did,” said Snowe vaguely.
Snowe seems very conscious of how key her role could be over the next few years, since she talks about building bridges with the enthusiasm of an Alaskan pork-monger. In recent years, she said, she’s been “embarrassed for our institution. I couldn’t possibly explain to my constituents what was going on here, the all-or-nothing drawing lines in the sand.”
You could imagine the next senate looking like the Supreme Court in the age of Sandra Day O’Connor, which is to say frequently frustrating but generally sensible.
We could do so very much worse.
Bob Herbert is off today.
The Senate, Snowe and Dinkytown
Article Tools Sponsored By
By GAIL COLLINS
Published: December 6, 2008
This week Senator Saxby Chambliss won a runoff vote in Georgia. It’s possible you missed this. Perhaps you were busy — oh, I don’t know, maybe contemplating the unemployment rate or learning to darn holes in old socks or embarking on a promising new career in the booming field of squirrel hunting.
Skip to next paragraph
Tony Cenicola/The New York Times
Gail Collins
Go to Columnist Page »
Readers' Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
* Read All Comments (144) »
Anyhow, the Georgia runoff was more important than you might imagine. Certainly more significant than anything Chambliss has done since he skipped a closed-door Senate session on Iraq intelligence data to go golfing with Tiger Woods. His victory means that the Republicans will have at least 41 seats in the Senate when Barack Obama becomes president. (This is actually going to happen eventually. I promise.)
Since it takes 60 senators to force a vote on a bill, if the Republicans stick together they can stop things from happening. Maintaining the capacity to bring things to a screeching halt is important for any party, so all the gang went down to Georgia to rally the troops. Mitt! Mike! McCain! Together again, just like in the primaries, with a stuffed manatee playing the part of Fred Thompson. “If we give them a blank check, they will sign that check and be taking money out of our pockets,” warned Rudy Giuliani, whose total failure as a presidential candidate clearly has not affected his ability to turn a phrase.
And the troops heard their call. One woman at a Sarah Palin rally told The Times’s Robbie Brown that she was terrified that Obama was “going to push a socialist agenda” but that she was sure “Saxby Chambliss can stop him.”
Now Chambliss has been a senator for six years, and his greatest achievement was getting ranked the 33rd best golfer in Washington by Golf Digest. It is highly unlikely that he could stop the president from doing anything beyond making a putt.
But it’s probably just as well that he won. Otherwise, the fate of that 60th seat would depend on the recount of the Minnesota senate race between Al Franken and Norm Coleman, which is going to last as long as the Mesozoic Era. Franken — in a count disputed by Coleman and the secretary of state — claims to be four votes ahead, and the results seem to hinge on a missing envelope containing 133 ballots from Dinkytown, a neighborhood near the University of Minnesota. While I’m sure it’s a great place to live, we really do not want to spend the next six months reading headlines like “It All Depends on Dinkytown.”
Besides, if the Democrats did get the 60 seats, one of them would belong to Joe Lieberman. You may recall that although Lieberman spent the last year campaigning for John McCain (and, as it turns out, donating money to Republican candidates for the senate), the Democrats were so desperate to keep him in their caucus that they caved in to his demands to keep his committee chairmanship. If Lieberman had turned out to be Mr. 60, he would not only have wanted the committee, he would have insisted on being carried to all its meetings on a litter, borne by the fellow senators who failed to appreciate him, with Lindsey Graham running ahead, clashing cymbals.
Above all, you have to love the fact that as things stand, the nexus of power will lie in the Republican moderate caucus, consisting entirely of the two senators from Maine, the Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.
“And Senator Specter,” corrected Snowe.
And Arlen Specter from Pennsylvania, although “moderate” and “deeply, deeply, deeply politically pragmatic” are not precisely the same thing. But I like thinking of next year’s senate as a kind of mythic quest movie in which a Democratic hero in need of a stimulus package or a Supreme Court confirmation is told: “Go forth and seeketh the Women of Maine,” who would both be played by Cate Blanchett.
Olympia Snowe, the senior senator, is widely regarded as one of Congress’s quality acts. In fact, some people might have wondered why John McCain, if he was so desperate for a woman on his ticket, ignored a well-traveled, independent-minded experienced legislator who does her homework in favor of an out-to-lunch moose-murderer who cannot seem to put together a coherent sentence.
“Well, you know, John made the decision he did,” said Snowe vaguely.
Snowe seems very conscious of how key her role could be over the next few years, since she talks about building bridges with the enthusiasm of an Alaskan pork-monger. In recent years, she said, she’s been “embarrassed for our institution. I couldn’t possibly explain to my constituents what was going on here, the all-or-nothing drawing lines in the sand.”
You could imagine the next senate looking like the Supreme Court in the age of Sandra Day O’Connor, which is to say frequently frustrating but generally sensible.
We could do so very much worse.
Bob Herbert is off today.
