In 1979, when Olympia Snowe started her career in the House of Representatives, there was exactly one woman serving in the U.S. Senate. (If you think you can come up with the name of that woman, I’ll put it at the bottom to give you time. I tried, but had to look it up.)
This year, the first year of Snowe’s retirement from elective office after 18 years as a U.S. senator, the number of women senators has just reached a historic high of 20.
That includes, of course, Minnesota’s senior senator, Amy Klobuchar, who was on hand Monday to introduce her former colleague Snowe to a Minneapolis luncheon put on by Women Winning, an organization that works to help pro-choice women win election at all levels of government in Minnesota.
Klobuchar noted during that introduction that when she arrived in Washington, she asked Snowe to be her mentor, and Snowe agreed. The two showered one another with praise Monday, so it might be worth noting at this point that Snowe is a lifelong Republican and Klobuchar a Democrat.
Worth noting because Snowe did not retire from politics. Rather, she retired from the Senate in order to devote herself to promoting bipartisanship, compromise, working across the aisle and across the ideological divide. In one recent talk, Snowe summarized the current congressional work product as “governing by brinksmanship and deferral and deadline.”
She has written a book titled “Fighting for Common Ground: How We Can Fix the Stalemate in Congress.” I went to Monday‘s luncheon mostly to hear some concrete ideas for doing that.
She actually didn’t talk much about those concrete ideas. And I haven’t read the book yet. I did find the introduction online here, and I’ll append a chunk of the introduction below in case you don’t click through.
Among the fairly specific ideas she recommends would be filibuster reform; biennnial budgets; that congressional salaries be withheld if a budget isn’t passed; campaign finance reform, including a rollback of the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” ruling; open primaries and five-day congressional workweeks at least three out of every four weeks that Congress is in session, meaning five days in Washington, trying to legislate, instead of the current norm of three-day weeks in Washington.
Instead of talking about these ideas Monday in Minneapolis, perhaps because her appearance was sponsored by Women Winning, Snowe talked a lot about the growing ranks of women in elective office and why she hopes the ranks continue to grow. She even suggested that the two goals are related, based on the theory that women are inherently better at compromise (but that’s way too sexist of a proposition for me to endorse, even though it does sort of reflect my own highly unscientific life experience).
Of course, the kind of reform ideas mentioned two paragraphs above might help, but most of them would require legislation or bipartisan supermajorities to adopt rule changes. If Congress had that kind of consensus about changing itself, the problem would already be solved, or would not have existed.
So Snowe, who has signed on as “senior fellow” with an outfit called the “Bipartisan Policy Center,” hopes to lead a reverse lobbying campaign, to enlist Americans to pressure their elected officials to seek common ground.
Snowe, who was the ultimate Senate moderate, surely has a more realistic grasp than I ever could of what it might take to bring compromise back into fashion. So I’m rooting for her. Our system, with its many choke points, pretty much doesn’t work well without compromise. But, sadly, I’m skeptical. The way our parties are comprised and the interest groups at work on the members of Congress seem to militate against compromise.
I did like what Klobuchar said on the topic, in introducing Snowe. I didn’t have my tape running yet, so I’ll paraphrase, but this is very close to what Klobuchar said:
The definition of political courage is going to have to change over the next few years, away from being a willingness to stand alone on principle and refuse to budge, but to be redefined as being willing to stand next to someone with whom you usually disagree and announce that you have decided on a compromise to move the country forward.
From the Intro…
…to the Snowe book, in which she explained her decision to leave the Senate:
“The Senate, as well as the 112th Congress, whose term ended in January 2013, was no longer a legislative body where the key issues facing the country could be resolved. I decided not to seek reelection only when I came to the sad conclusion that I could more effectively serve my country from outside the Senate than from within…
“Legislative outcomes are often preordained, and positions have usually solidified along party lines before a bill even reaches the Senate floor. Today, people rarely rush from Senate offices and cloakrooms to the floor and the galleries to hear a consequential speech.
“We might take solace from the fact that it wasn't always like this in Congress, nor does it have to be this way in the future. I came to Washington in 1979 determined to make an impact (when I became a member of the House that year, I joined a cross-party women's caucus whose work yielded real practical results), and possessed of the same spirit, I intend to continue this effort now on another stage.
“The bottom line is that Congress retains the same potential in 2013 as at any time in its history. But it requires hard work to realize that potential, and legislators have to grapple with the major questions by working with the President, with the other side, and with members of their own party with whom they might disagree. In recent years, the two parties have stood in monolithic opposition; senators collaborate less; they hold separate conferences and caucuses and they meet less often in social settings than in the past.
“The Senate's path out of dysfunction leads through increased bipartisanship and cross-party consensus-building. With the same spirit as before, only now working outside Congress, I'll maintain my fight for these improvements and lend my voice and experience as a consensus-builder and act as a catalyst for change. It is imperative we make certain there is a real political benefit and reward to be gained for bipartisanship so we can break what has become the equivalent of the parliamentary gridlock in Congress.
“…I know what we have to do to fix Washington, beginning with a call to action to empower the millions of Americans who believe that bipartisanship offers the best way forward at this tipping point for America. Through the power of social media we must mobilize from the grassroots upward to send an unmistakable message to our lawmakers that there is popular support for seeking common ground rather than destructive divisiveness…
And finally, as promised:
Answer to trivia question at the top: The only woman serving in the Senate in 1979 – when Snowe arrive in the U.S. House -- was Kansas Republican Nancy Landon Kassebaum. The number of women senators piddled around at the one or two level until 1992, when four new women senators were elected in the same cycle.)