Letters: Olympia Snowe’s call for bipartisanship

Re “No way to run a country,” Opinion, Oct. 8

The commitment by former Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) to restore bipartisanship in politics is commendable. Sadly, her goal of rewarding lawmakers who strive for common ground and penalizing those who don’t may be as effective as throwing a snowball in hell.

Our democracy is fast becoming an oligarchy in which the mega-wealthy few control the political climate. Consider the success of the libertarian Koch brothers, who gave millions to groups that financially supported a $200-million media blitz to turn public sentiment against — wait for it — affordable healthcare.

After the repetition of paranoid warnings through a slew of right-wing splinter groups and broadcasters, constituents and their representatives now sincerely believe it is “principled” to overturn the Affordable Care Act at any cost.

Compromise and common ground, tragically, have no place in this new framework.

Wendy Blais

North Hills

Snowe was respected in the Senate for her decency and seriousness. But her personality cannot be replicated and her prescriptions fall short.

Further, Snowe confuses process with substance. Bipartisanship and reform aren’t ends in themselves. They should advance more substantive national goals. Rather than urging Congress to in effect “play nice,” a better approach would involve educating voters about the coming calamitous debt and unsustainable entitlement burden that neither party has shown the will to address (and in that regard, Snowe’s demands for bipartisanship have been met).

The problem is not extremism or a dysfunction that could be remedied by consensus-building; it is basic arithmetic for leaders who cannot reconcile ends and means. We are plagued with a generation of them.

If opinion leaders can’t clearly state our problems, what hope is there for officeholders? We indeed get the government we demand.

Gregory C. McCarthy

Burke, Va.

Snowe’s piece reminded me of the Sherlock Holmes story “Silver Blaze,” about the missing racehorse. Like that story — in which Holmes solved the mystery by noting what didn’t happen, that the dog didn’t bark — I found her piece remarkable about what she failed to mention: who is behind the corrosive environment in our national political discourse.

Elsewhere in the same issue of The Times, there was an article with the headline “Compromise is not an option,” which highlighted the fact that for many tea party Republicans from gerrymandered districts, obstruction is a high art form.

There would be no harm in Snowe noting the obvious.

Edward M. Bialack

Woodland Hills

After reading Snowe’s Op-Ed article, I longed for the not-so-long-ago days when intelligence and experience were requirements to serve in Congress, when collaboration and policymaking were the norm, and when bipartisanship and compromise were not dirty words.

Nowadays, we have a House that is being controlled by inexperienced right-wingers, with advanced degrees in intimidation, who have given new meaning to dysfunctional government.

Phyllis Landis

Ocean Hills

ALSO:

Letters: Yes to snail mail

Letters: A soldier’s post-war fight

Letters: How to deal with pit bulls