Recently, shock waves went through the political world when long-time public servant, Senator Olympia Snowe, decided to not run for re-election this year. No one saw this coming, no one. It seemed to come out of the clear blue sky. She isn’t that old, her health is good, and she is generally held in high regard.
So why is she leaving? Senator Snowe issued a statement detailing the reasons why recently, ans said people really shouldn’t have been so surprised at her decision. In essence, she said, “I’ve been trying to tell you.” The reasons she cites are striking, and are food for thought:
[snip] During the Federal Convention of 1787, James Madison wrote in his Notes of Debates that “the use of the Senate is to consist in its proceedings with more coolness, with more system, and with more wisdom, than the popular branch.” Indeed, the Founding Fathers intended the Senate to serve as an institutional check that ensures all voices are heard and considered, because while our constitutional democracy is premised on majority rule, it is also grounded in a commitment to minority rights.Yet more than 200 years later, 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.
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