Once Moderates Built Bridges; Now They Must Burn Them
There was something poignant and powerfully revealing about the public agonizing last week of Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) over John R. Bolton, President Bush's nominee as ambassador to the United Nations.
Chafee, an iconoclastic moderate, is a swing vote as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee considers Bolton's nomination this week. Every committee Democrat is likely to oppose Bolton; if Chafee -- or conceivably another Republican, such as Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska -- joins them, the nomination would die without ever reaching the full Senate.
Chafee isn't likely to bury Bolton. The senator believes presidents deserve to pick their advisors, absent some overwhelming reason to the contrary. Chafee was appointed to the Senate in 1999 after the death of his father, John Chafee, and elected in 2000. In that brief Senate career, the younger Chafee has voted to confirm every executive branch nominee he's considered for both Presidents Clinton and Bush.
During the contentious Foreign Relations hearings last week, Chafee gave every indication he intended to back Bolton. Chafee says he's waiting to hear all the evidence. But his press secretary, Stephen Hourahan, says the senator "is inclined" to give Bush his choice at the U.N. Yet Chafee also made it abundantly clear last week that Bolton would not be his choice. "I wish this wasn't the nominee to the United Nations," Chafee said plaintively.
Chafee's lament captured a dynamic much larger than the struggle over Bolton. This is a miserable moment for centrist senators. They are caught between a president pursuing an aggressive, even crusading, conservative agenda and a Democratic Party fighting ferociously to block it. That frequently leaves the centrists, like Chafee with Bolton, wishing for an alternative that isn't available.
Historically, Senate moderates have thrived by bridging the differences between the parties. But on most issues, the two parties today are hurtling away from each other at high speed. "It's hard to serve as a bridge when the two sides are so far apart," notes Brown University political scientist Darrell West.
Just as important, each party's dominant voices now believe their side benefits politically from accentuating, not narrowing, those differences. The moderate senators are like diplomats counseling compromise to two countries that have already decided on war.
