Have we fallen so far, so fast, in American politics that a senator’s approval of compromise legislation she virtually hand-crafted is touted as a transcendent moment of statesmanship?

Let’s take a breath and think about it.

Sen. Olympia Snowe did the right thing by endorsing health care reform. Yet the bill would have passed the committee with or without her. Her vote was neither unanticipated, nor had an effect on the outcome, but was hailed as politically symbolic.

In fact, it has been compared to Sen. Margaret Chase Smith’s opposition to the scourge of McCarthyism. Yet doesn’t voicing a
noble, minority opinion against tyranny and fear trump siding with
the majority on compromises to health policy?

Especially since Snowe’s most critical moment will come later, before the full Senate, if she indeed becomes the 60th vote for the final reform bill and blocks the inevitable Republican filibuster. There is no guarantee that Snowe will cast that deciding vote. “My vote today is my vote today,” Snowe said of her decision on the committee bill. “It does not forecast my vote tomorrow.”

So why all the overblown reaction? (We cannot remember another committee vote that’s earned such attention.)

It’s because the real breakthrough with Snowe is that she’s been willing to pursue compromise, regardless of partisan pressures. In the super-heated atmosphere of Washington D.C., this pragmatism — the rarest of commodities, nowadays — is enough to almost earn your likeness engraved on Mount Rushmore. 

Something is wrong when the political culture mistakes sound bites and status updates for thoughtful policy positions or statements of value, and blind adherence to ideological positions is championed over a mutual desire for progress.

An interesting argument would be to consider how Snowe, if a newcomer to politics in today’s realm, would be viewed. She wouldn’t be easily branded, which would make her chances in a political primary difficult, given the stark values-testing that happens in those hyper-partisan free-for-alls.

Who would want the middle-of-the-road practical type, who may work for sensible aims? Some fun they are. Attention would find the ones on the left chirping about corporate greed, and the ones on the right screaming about America’s turning into France. They get the ratings.

This is why Snowe’s qualities and behavior earn equal parts respect and ire, and why her great home state is viewed as this weird politically purplish Neverland that exists between red and blue. In those hues, there’s such great pressure to adopt an ideological identity that those in between are excluded and shunned.

The irony is that Washington — and the country — could use many more Snowes. When the new symbol of bipartisanship is the vote of one senator for a committee bill she essentially co-wrote, it’s time to realize our political system has become far too polarized.

[email protected]