Obama’s Pointless Pursuit of Olympia Snowe

Obama’s pointless bipartisanship.

“There she is, the Party of One!” cried Sen. Barbara Mikulski when she saw Sen. Olympia Snowe outside the Senate chamber last week. Mikulski, in a wheel-chair because of a broken ankle, rolled closer to the object of her praise. “She is belle of the ball, because she has got so much on the ball!” Snowe gave an embarrassed nod. Sen. John Kerry hurried by, but stopped himself long enough to bestow upon Snowe a lordly embrace. “O, we love her!” he announced. Sen. Tom Carper testified to her brilliance. “Olympia’s terrific, as you know,” he said.

On Mount Olympus in Greece there were many gods, but on Mount Olympia in the District of Columbia there is one: Snowe of Maine, daughter of Spartan immigrants (yes, that Sparta). A Republican of the rarest type—a “moderate” willing to truck with Democrats—she is being feted, almost prayed to, by President Barack Obama and his party’s leaders as they struggle in the Senate to amass a filibuster-proof 60 votes for “health-care reform.” In the halls outside the chamber, every Democrat seems to have just come from, or be on the way to, another “meeting with Olympia”—if, that is, she isn’t too busy talking to the president on the phone. Politically secure (she won her last race in 2006 by a 3–1 margin), and possessing the studious air of a graduate student, Snowe has the kind of celebrity that only the Senate could find riveting: her vote is entirely up for grabs. Despite a bit of grandiloquence and a habit of quoting Longfellow (who was, in her defense, a Mainer), she is likable and earnest. She was believable when she told me that she had not sought such a prominent role. “It’s not me dictating anything,” she said.

Full Story: Obama’s Pointless Pursuit of Olympia Snowe | Newsweek Voices – Howard Fineman | Newsweek.com.