Senator Susan Collins Wrote a Moderate Essay that Mostly Misses the Point, but Includes a Comment from George Washington that Hits It between the Eyes

© 2010 Peter Free

 

10 October 2010

 

Collins’ moderate Republican group is near extinction, which is bad news for an extremes-oriented nation

 

Senator Susan Collins (R, Maine) thinks that super-majorities in Congress are bad:

 

[T]he American people are so angry with incumbents of all political persuasions, and particularly those who are in charge.

 

The way out is far from clear, but I would suggest that a divided government and a more evenly split Senate are more conducive to bipartisanship than the super-majorities and one-party control of the White House and Congress that we see today. When one party has all the power, the temptation is to roll over the minority, leading to resentment and resistance because the minority has so few options.

 

During the past two years, the minority party has been increasingly shut out of the discussion. Even in the Senate, which used to pride itself on being a bastion of free and open debate, procedural tactics are routinely used to prevent Republican amendments. That causes Republicans to overuse the filibuster, because our only option is to stop a bill to which we cannot offer amendments.

 

 

© 2010 Susan M. Collins, Why divided government would be less divisive, Washington Post B04 (10 October 2010)

 

Yes Senator, but

 

Senator Collins’ evened-out Congress prescription misses the point that amendments from both parties are usually designed to sabotage centrist, workable positions ─ no matter what.

 

It is the extreme positions that dominate national discourse today that are the problem.

 

Balancing the parties’ proportions in Congress is not going to mend that.  Unless Americans, including Congress people, agree that it might finally be time to do something sensible on each of the pressing issues facing us.

 

I don’t see that happening yet.  Our entertaining extremist fringes are still wandering in La La Land, and the rest of us are content to let them rule national discussion because:

 

“Our Congress person is better’n your’un, and we ain’t gonna get rid of our’un.”

 

Until we hold ourselves, and each of our representatives, accountable for realistic thinking and action ─ we are just going to get more of the same behavior that Collins complains about.  No matter how Congress is proportioned.

 

How does George Washington fit in?

 

After having done her pre-election Party duty ─ implying that we must return Republicans to a more numerically solid base of Congressional power ─ Senator Collins hits the nail on the head when she slyly eases in a quotation from Founding Father George Washington:

 

Not long ago, I happened upon George Washington's "Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior," a transcription of various guides to etiquette, written when Washington was but a teenager.

 

It is not until No. 110 that young George got to the heart of the matter: "Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience."

 

That little spark lights our way much more brightly than bomb-throwing, scorched-earth, incendiary political rhetoric ever will.

 

 

© 2010 Susan M. Collins, Why divided government would be less divisive, Washington Post B04 (10 October 2010)

 

Senator Collins named the real issue, didn’t she?

 

The problem with the United States today is that most of its citizens, and virtually all of its political leaders, have lost sight of, and dedication to, the Whole.  Also called the Golden Rule.

 

Conscience is, indeed, the key.

 

But another “but”

 

The hurdle for us is the fact that today’s America seems to have descended into a individualistic Hedonism so deep, that it can no longer see Conscience ─ left perched on the edge of the cliff we have fallen so far from.

 

Collins essay therefore poses an unwitting contrast between the ideal’s Founder America and today’s sad version of it.

 

Are any of us alert enough to appreciate, and act to remedy, the difference?