The last weekend in July, Maine\u2019s senior U. S. Sen. Susan Collins was at her camp on Cold Stream Pond in Enfield while her party\u2019s presidential candidate, Donald Trump, was on television, attacking the parents of Humayun Khan \u2013 a U. S. Army captain killed protecting his men from an approaching car bomb in Iraq \u2013 and suggesting he had sacrificed as much for his country by employing people.
For Collins, it was the final straw, another indication that Trump was dangerously unfit for office, along with his mocking of a disabled reporter and his assertion that an Indiana-born judge couldn\u2019t preside over a case involving Trump University on account of his Mexican ancestry. She had been a Jeb Bush supporter, but now knew she could not cast a ballot for this man. \u201cI felt compelled to speak out,\u201d she recalls.
And speak she did, in a Washington Post op-ed denouncing Trump as a cruel, disrespectful and ill-informed figure who lacked \u201cthe temperament, self-discipline and judgment required to be president.\u201d He lacked respect for \u201cthe constitutional separation of powers, the very foundation of our form of government\u201d or the self-control needed to avoid \u201cdisputes spinning out of control.\u201d
Five months later, Trump is president, his party is in control of both houses of Congress and all three branches of government, and Collins is in a vital but uncomfortable position: the most moderate member of the majority caucus of the Senate, the body most likely to constrain the new president\u2019s excesses, be it by legislation, investigation, or confirmation hearings. She\u2019s spoken out against his immigration ban , his omission of any mention of Jews in his Holocaust remembrance statement, his appointment of former Breitbart News executive director Stephen Bannon to the National Security Council and his nomination of billionaire Betsy DeVos as education secretary. Her office is flooded with phone calls and visitors, her every vote followed by journalists, her actions simultaneously praised and condemned by millions, in real time, on social media.
Sen. Susan Collins
\u201cThe Senate is our only hope for keeping some constraints in place, both for really bad policy and a descent that could lead to authoritarianism,\u201d says Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a prominent critic of Trump. \u201cThis is first and foremost about protecting the Republic but also about protecting the Republican Party from being destroyed by a group of demagogues.\u201d
The Maine Sunday Telegram spoke with a dozen observers of U. S. politics, including scholars, political scientists, former Collins staffers and the senator herself, to explore how she sees her and the Senate\u2019s role vis-\u00e0-vis the Trump administration, and what is at stake for the country as a whole. Most agreed that Collins\u2019 longstanding commitment to defending the Senate\u2019s deliberative tradition and her willingness to build centrist partnerships will be invaluable in the months and years ahead, and that the stakes are very high.
\u201cI don\u2019t feel that I am playing a new role in this administration,\u201d Collins says. \u201cI\u2019ve always tried to bring people together and solve problems, and that\u2019s not easy. But I will say that the pressure and pace of this since we came back into session in January have been extraordinary.\u201d
Sarah Kendizor, a St. Louis-based scholar of Uzbekistan, is becoming a fixture on cable news because she successfully predicted so much about Trump\u2019s actions months in advance, drawn from years of studying and living in that authoritarian Central Asian state. \u201cThe Constitution is just a piece of paper unless it\u2019s upheld in practice, but I think a lot of Americans have taken our rights for granted and the strength of our institutions for granted,\u201d she says. \u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing now is the speed at which democracy can be undone.\u201d
In his first two weeks in office, Trump has alienated foreign allies and his own intelligence services, tweet-threatened China, Mexico, Iran and Chicago, issued an executive order that discriminates against Muslims and thus may not be constitutional, impugned the legitimacy of the federal judge who blocked it, and demanded Americans disbelieve their own eyes to accept his claims about the size of his inauguration crowds. His top aides have threatened journalists, while others are leaking information to them like crazy, apparently panicked over how policies are being made.
\u201cWhatever your opinion about his intentions, it\u2019s very clear that he\u2019s making decisions without communicating with experts in the field, lawyers and career civil servants,\u201d says Brian Duff, chairman of the University of New England\u2019s political science department. \u201cNo president before has ever more needed an institution that can slow him down and think critically about what he\u2019s doing.\u201d
Ornstein remembers the fear and uncertainty of the Watergate crisis, when nobody was certain whether then-President Nixon \u2013 paranoid and, as declassified tapes have shown, unhinged \u2013 would relinquish power peacefully if impeached. But he notes that Congress wasn\u2019t as militantly partisan as it is today, and White House aides \u201cfrequently deep-sixed outrageous, unconstitutional or illegal things that Nixon ordered them to do.\u201d He has no confidence anyone around Trump would do the same, and he says the Supreme Court is less likely to provide checks as it did in 1973.
\u201cI have no confidence that you will get any kind of independent check from the leadership of the House, and the (Democratic) minority there is pretty much powerless,\u201d he adds. \u201cSo much of this will devolve to the Senate.\u201d
This is where Susan Collins comes in. The Senate \u2013 with its power to block or confirm the president\u2019s Cabinet and judicial nominees, conduct investigations, and legislate \u2013 has a thin 52-48 Republican majority, including Collins and a handful of senators who\u2019ve on occasion bucked their leadership to defeat initiatives they found excessive or to come up with bipartisan compromises. That\u2019s why Collins\u2019 phone lines have been overwhelmed for much of the past week: Seeing her as potentially swayable, callers across the country have been bombarding her staff with their desires regarding Cabinet nominees and the dismantling of the Affordable Care Act.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., listens on Jan. 23 as Maine Sen. Susan Collins discusses her Affordable Care Act replacement plan. J. Scott Applewhite\/Associated Press
\u201cThe advantage for those not following the herd is that they will have some leverage because few people are moving over to the other side,\u201d says Steffen Schmidt, a political science professor at Iowa State University. \u201cRight now Collins can probably hold Trump hostage for a vote and get a yuuuge new naval facility built in Maine for her vote.\u201d
As of Friday morning, 88.9 percent of Collins\u2019 votes have been in accord with Trump\u2019s and her party leadership\u2019s wishes since Trump took office, according to a tracker set up by FiveThirtyEight, the data journalism outlet led by Nate Silver. But voting against one\u2019s party is unusual \u2013 presumably members agree with most of what their party stands for \u2013 and that record actually makes her the second least \u201cTrump-loyal\u201d Senate Republican after Rand Paul of Kentucky. After she casts her vote against education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos, the billionaire Michigan charter school and voucher advocate, she may well be first. The other 50 Republican senators have displayed 100 percent loyalty to date.
\u201cSo many Republicans are afraid of their own voters, and the Republican base likes Trump a whole hell of a lot more than the Republican House and Senate caucuses do,\u201d says Kyle Kondik, managing editor of the Sabato\u2019s Crystal Ball political newsletter at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. \u201cBut while Senate Republicans may not like Trump, they also recognize that they are in this together, that if he sinks then they may sink, too.\u201d
Collins is relatively free in this regard. She\u2019s the most popular politician in her state \u2013 and the second most popular senator in the country after Bernie Sanders \u2013 and is not up for re-election until 2020. Maine voted for Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 points, so there\u2019s much less of a political price to pay for defying him than there would be if she were representing ruby-red Kentucky or Alabama.
\u201cMy guess is that she\u2019s not thinking too much about the electoral politics and she\u2019s genuinely deeply concerned about this administration and the direction this could take,\u201d Duff says. \u201cBut even though the Democrats see her as their last best hope, she\u2019s a Republican, and she\u2019s going to have conservative ideas.\u201d
Whenever asked about her role models, Collins has always mentioned two Republican senators from Maine, Margaret Chase Smith (whom she met as a Caribou High School senior) and William Cohen (for whom she served as a staffer for her first 12 years after graduating from college). Both are famous for confronting rogue figures from their own party: Smith for being the first senator to challenge anti-communist zealot Joseph McCarthy; Cohen for, as a first-term House member, being one of the first Republicans to back Nixon\u2019s impeachment.
There\u2019s one critical aspect of Collins\u2019 conservatism: It\u2019s most clearly and consistently expressed in her commitment and reverence for the institutional role and the traditional values of the Senate itself, a famously deliberative body where comity, respect and fair play among members once reigned.
\u201cShe really believes in the process and that you should abide by the rules, and I think in these really intense political times, one of the things that really screws up things in the House and the Senate is when the parties start abandoning the structures and the rules,\u201d says Lance Dutson, a former Collins campaign and Senate staffer who is now a political consultant.
\u201cI guard the prerogatives of Congress and believe strongly in the separation of powers,\u201d Collins herself says, citing times she\u2019s spoken out against executive overreach by George W. Bush and Barack Obama, even when she actually supported the goals each president was trying to achieve by his efforts. \u201cI believe I\u2019ve been consistent from administration to administration in that area.\u201d
Last week she denounced Trump\u2019s executive order on refugees and immigration, which includes directives to prefer non-Muslims, saying \u201creligious tests serve no useful purpose in the immigration process and run contrary to our American values.\u201d While three dozen other Republican members of Congress also expressed reservations, few were as direct as Collins. The vast majority said nothing or, like House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, expressed support.
Amy Fried, a political scientist at the University of Maine, agrees that Collins is a strong defender of fair play in the Senate, but says her political decisions are more difficult to predict. \u201cIn some ways she\u2019s an institutionalist and wants to preserve the regular rules of the body and have the system work internally,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s a little unclear, though, what the bright lines would be for her when actually voting on an issue.\u201d
Collins skeptics argue the senator is a chameleon who makes many political decisions based on the political climate around her rather than a firm set of ideals, which makes them fearful that she can\u2019t be relied on to challenge Trump\u2019s excesses .
In this regard, there\u2019s probably no more diligent critic than Dan Aibel, a New York City playwright and political junkie who has spent the past decade tracking and critiquing her every move on his Collins Watch blog. \u201cCollins has long approached controversial issues with the aim of coming as close to occupying both sides of them as possible,\u201d he says via email. \u201cSometimes this results in blatant hypocrisy,\u201d he adds, noting she voted in this way on defunding Planned Parenthood or stripping the Environmental Protection Agency of its ability to regulate carbon \u201cwhile insisting that her vote isn\u2019t intended to achieve exactly the effect it\u2019s certain to have.\u201d
Critics have long lists of such votes, including announcing she will oppose DeVos\u2019 candidacy as education secretary when it comes to a full vote Monday, while voting not to block her candidacy in committee. Or putting forward an amendment to ensure the Affordable Care Act isn\u2019t repealed before a replacement can be found but, once it was defeated by her colleagues, voting for the measure that would enable that very outcome.
\u201cIf you didn\u2019t stop something from moving forward and then you voted against it, sometimes the initial vote was the one of greater consequence,\u201d Fried says. \u201cSometimes I think the Maine and national press isn\u2019t aware of that dynamic when covering Collins.\u201d
Collins and her staff strongly disagree with these sorts of assessments, arguing they are based on misunderstanding of the arcane machinations of the U. S. Senate. Collins, they say, is consistent in wanting to allow important measures, even those she opposes, to be deliberated and voted on by all senators. Other times, the most effective way to advance her own amendment is by voting for motions that, on the face of it, appear to be inconsistent with her stated goals.
\u201cSenator Collins will at times vote to proceed to legislation that she may oppose because she believes that it should be the pending business of the Senate,\u201d says her spokeswoman, Annie Clark. \u201cSometimes she is supporting alternative legislation, and proceeding \u2026 is the best way to get an alternative amendment considered.\u201d
Collins says she believes the full Senate should get its say on Cabinet and judicial nominations, which is why she voted for committee approval for Obama nominees Chuck Hagel (for defense secretary) and Tom Perez (for labor) even as she voted against them on the Senate floor, and is doing the same for DeVos. \u201cI believe that in most cases the full Senate should have the opportunity to work its will,\u201d she says, noting she opposed the Democrats\u2019 successful 2013 effort to, in effect, eliminate filibusters for most nominees, something she says they now regret. \u201cI stood up for the Senate institutions and didn\u2019t think that was right.\u201d
Ornstein notes that Collins\u2019 room to maneuver is influenced by her colleagues. \u201cWe shouldn\u2019t make the mistake of putting the entire burden on Susan Collins,\u201d he says. \u201cIt becomes particularly difficult if on so many of these votes there are only three Republicans, because then you will see Hannity, Trump, Bannon, Breitbart and a host of others going after her full bore. It\u2019s a totally different proposition if there are eight or 10 Republicans saying, \u2018This is not acceptable. We\u2019re drawing the line here.\u2019 \u201d
How will she proceed in the Trump Era? Same as she always has, the senator says.
\u201cMy approach is guided by my instincts from Maine to try to apply common sense and be pragmatic and try to solve problems rather than try to pursue partisan political points,\u201d she says. \u201cI don\u2019t think the people of Maine want me to spend my time contributing to gridlock and trying to slash and burn and be extensively critical of every action that\u2019s taken by the other party.
\u201cThey\u2019re more pragmatic than that and they know that compromise often leads to the best solution.\u201d
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