Olympia Snowe’s book and how its themes recall those of Margaret Chase Smith

By Paul H. Mills

In the 15 months since Senator Olympia Snowe stunned the nation with her surprising renunciation, both Maine and the nation have been awaiting a more revealing explanation. Such a disclosure has now occurred with the recent publication of her book, Fighting for Common Ground – How We Can Fix the Stalemate in Congress. Both those who support, as well as oppose the former senator’s principles, will find the book of interest.

The book also includes a personal memoir about her life that sheds intriguing background on how her philosophy emerged. Losing both of her parents by age 9 – a year younger than the age at which Eleanor Roosevelt also became an orphan – occasioned a precocious personal emancipation. This Snowe believes also gave rise to the independence that also characterized her public service.

It was, however, more with the only woman to represent Maine in Washington before Snowe, Margaret Chase Smith, to which one draws a closer parallel. For Eleanor Roosevelt still had an upbringing of significant privilege and affluence. Both Margaret Smith and Snowe, however, experienced childhood frugality if not parsimony. Both came from working class, ethnic roots. Even in the relative comfort of the 1950s and before loss of her parents, Snowe discusses how there was neither a family automobile nor even a phone in their home. Despite the modest circumstances, she writes with nostalgic approval of the reinforcement her Lewiston Elm Street neighbors and the nearby Wallace Elementary School provided. The Greek Orthodox-sponsored private school in New York she attended a half dozen years was also a source of guidance and inspiration as was – once she returned to Maine – her final three years of high school at Auburn’s Edward Little.

Neither Smith nor Snowe had a prescient ambition to seek elective political office.

Both Senators Smith and Snowe were known for sounding the alarm about the direction of American public policy. In Smith’s case this meant attacking the smear attacks of McCarthyites of the far right in the 1950s while decrying abusive sometimes violent tactics originating from the radical left in the ’70s.

While a keynote of Snowe’s book is a condemnation of polarization she levels an even greater denunciation for a condition not so prevalent in Margaret Smith’s time: paralysis, the inability of Congress to even keep the government store open for business.

Snowe thus reserves some of her greatest passion in the early pages of her book for her protracted experience in 2011 attempting to obtain a floor vote on a small business investment research amendment. Though the item won majority approval it failed because it couldn’t achieve a 60-vote super majority, a hurdle few measures can ever attain.

The book has a number of stirring accounts of dramatic vignettes in her career. Meeting the legendary breast cancer prevention advocate Nancy Brinker in 1983 was one of them. It was an association that saw Brinker develop the private initiative of a $2 billion foundation and a public initiative spearheaded by Snowe which together have significantly reduced breast cancer deaths and enhance awareness of breast cancer prevention.

Another episode recounted by Snowe was the Clinton impeachment process by which she threw in her lot with a few fellow Republicans and all Democrats in bringing to an end one of the more dramatic but now nearly forgotten moments of our era.

Both Smith and Snowe have been identified as independent Republicans. That in neither case should mean “liberal” or even “moderate.” Both senators instead should more readily be described as eclectic. They both demonstrated a think-for-oneself-as-each-issue-comes-along mindset that defies any knee-jerk stereotyped labels. In Senator Smith’s case, this was illustrated by her supporting the war in Vietnam while at the same time opposing such Defense Department signature initiatives as the ABM missile and supersonic transport plane.

For Senator Snowe this would mean voting with Democrats on some social and economic issues but being more of a Republican on fiscal, defense and foreign policy matters. This would also mean supporting a version of the Obamacare proposal in committee but opposing its final version on the Senate floor, something she recounts in the new book.

That Senator Snowe could have devoted more space to a number of other issues and events is perhaps the one regret I have about Fighting For Common Ground. There’s no mention, for example, of her near death political experience when waging re-election in 1990, a cliffhanger during an eventful time in Maine government with its looming budget crisis and a nation on the brink of going to its first war since Vietnam. Her experiences as a member of the prestigious Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees are given only brief treatment. Perhaps out of modesty she bestows little attention on such accomplishments as saving the Portsmouth-Kittery Navy shipyard.

The book is not, however, by any means intended as a definitive biography, one I hope either she or someone else still finds time to write. It is not surprising that one has not yet emerged. Those about Margaret Chase Smith, for example, did not appear until more than two decades after she herself left the Senate. One hopes we will not have to wait that long for the first one about Senator Snowe.

What form Senator Snowe’s own influence will take now that this book has hit the stands is yet to be fully determined. A suggestion as to how she continues to be involved appears in her testimonial to several organizations to which she is lending her support or leadership. They include the Bipartisan Policy Center and Campaign to Fix the Debt. Another is No Labels, one to which I think Senator Smith would also subscribe. Whatever the path Snowe pursues she no doubt will have an influence that like Senator Smith’s, will continue to endure.

Paul H. Mills is a Farmington attorney well known for his analyses and historical understanding of public affairs in Maine. He can be reached by e-mail: pmills@myfairpoint.net.