Sen. Snowe urges colleagues to follow Constitutional blueprint

    Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Sen. Olympia Snowe’s farewell speech delivered Dec. 13 to her colleagues in the U.S. Senate, The complete text of her remarks can be found at www.snowe.senate.gov
    Thank you, Mr. President. I rise today with an infinite appreciation for the institution of the United States Senate, as well as a profound sense of gratitude — as I prepare to conclude my 18 years in the Senate, and my nearly 40 years in elective office on behalf of the people of Maine.
    Mr. President, it has been difficult to envision this day when I would be saying farewell to the Senate, just as it was impossible to imagine I would one day become a United States Senator as I was growing up in Maine. But such is the miracle of America that a young girl of a Greek immigrant and a first-generation American, who was orphaned at the age of nine, could, in time, be elected to serve in the greatest deliberative body the world has ever known and become the third longest serving woman in the history of the United States Congress.
    … I also inherited a legacy of bipartisanship and independence from Senator Margaret Chase Smith – who is best remembered for remarks during only her second year in the Senate when, with truly uncommon courage and principled independence, she telegraphed the truth about McCarthyism during the Red Scare of the 1950s with her renowned “Declaration of Conscience” speech on the Senate floor. In fifteen minutes, she had done what 94 of her colleagues – male colleagues, I might add – had not dared to do, and in so doing, slayed a giant of demagoguery.
    So when people ask me why I may be challenging a particular party position, or why I simply don’t “go with the flow.” I tell them, please don’t take it personally, I can’t help it, I’m from Maine. But that’s what Maine people truly expect from their elected officials – to do what you believe is right, for the right reasons, and in the right way.
    Throughout my tenure, I’ve borne witness to government’s incredible potential as an instrument for that common good. I have also experienced its capacity for serial dysfunction. Indeed, as I stated in announcing I would not seek a fourth term in the United States Senate, it is regrettable that excessive political polarization in Washington today is preventing us from tackling our problems in this period of monumental consequence for our nation.
    … Mr. President, we are surrounded by history perpetually here in the Senate, as well as throughout the Capitol – how could we not be inspired by it, to rise to this occasion? Indeed, if you know history, you understand the very story of America’s most formative days was defined by an understanding that effective governance requires the building of consensus, and that such consensus is achievable, even after the exercise of passionate advocacy. Which in conclusion brings us back to the creation of a document we all cherish and revere – and that is, our United States Constitution.
    … Two hundred and twenty-five years ago, 55 leaders from divergent geographic and philosophical backgrounds converged on the City of Philadelphia, to draft a new structure of government, to strengthen our fledgling country. These were no shrinking violets. They had risked their lives and fortunes to establish a new nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty, and justice for all.
    They were strong-willed, and unabashedly opinionated. They disagreed and argued about a great many matters, both petty and consequential. Thomas Jefferson even considered Virginia, and not the United States, as his “country.” And yet, by September of that year, 39 of the original delegates signed the most enduring and ingenious governing document the world has ever known – the Constitution of the United States. It didn’t happen because 55 people who shared identical viewpoints gathered in a room and rubber-stamped their unanimous thinking. It happened because these visionaries determined that the gravity and enormity of their common goal necessitated the courage to advance decision-making through consensus.
    Mr. President, I worry we are losing the art of legislating. And when the history of this chapter in the Senate is written, we don’t want it to conclude it was here that it became an antiquated practice. So as I depart the Senate that I love, I urge all of my colleagues to follow the Founding Fathers’ blueprint, in order to return the institution to its highest calling of governing through consensus. For it is only then that the United States Senate can ascend to fulfill the demands of our times, the promise of our nation, and the rightful expectations of the American people.
    Thank you, Mr. President. May God bless you all, and my God bless the United States of America. I yield the floor.