July 20, 2007
Election Day is 473 days away, but already Maine Sen. Susan
Collins' run for re-election is suffering from the "c" word.
As in "complicated."
Consider the aftermath of Tuesday's all-night Senate debate
about the war in Iraq. It ended Wednesday when Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid failed to force a vote on a troop withdrawal
that would start in 120 days and end by April 30.
Four Republican senators – Collins, fellow Mainer Olympia
Snowe, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Gordon Smith of Oregon –
crossed the aisle to vote against a looming GOP filibuster of the
so-called "Levin-Reed amendment." (Its authors are Democratic
Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan and Jack Reed of Rhode Island.)
Snowe, Hagel and Smith broke ranks for an obvious reason:
They plan to support the Levin-Reed plan if it ever comes up for
an actual vote.
Not so for Collins. In a news release issued as the Senate moved
on to other business, she said she voted to stop the filibuster
because "I believe that the Senate should have an opportunity to
vote on all the policy alternatives in Iraq."
At the same time, Collins said she would have voted against
Levin-Reed had it gone to an up-or-down vote.
In other words (with apologies to Sen. John Kerry), Collins voted
for a vote on Levin-Reed – before she would have voted against
it.
It's but one example of the widening gap between Collins and
Snowe – who's not running for anything in 2008 – on how best
to proceed in Iraq.
Snowe, in her floor speech Tuesday evening, could not have
been clearer: "We can no longer afford to place American
servicemen and women in harm's way to instill a peace that the
Iraqis seem unwilling to seek for themselves."
And Collins? Not so clear.
Rather than back Levin-Reed, which would require President
Bush to withdraw all but a "limited presence" of troops to train
Iraqis and secure U.S. interests in Iraq, Collins has co-authored a
proposal with Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska.
That measure "would immediately require the President to
change the mission of our troops away from combat and toward
counter-terrorism operations, border security, and training Iraqi
forces," Collins said in her news release.
What it wouldn't do, unlike Levin-Reed, is set a hard date by
which the president must complete said change. The plan's
March 30 date for "redeployment," Collins spokesman Kevin
Kelley said, is more "a goal" than a hard deadline.
(Nor would Collins' proposal prevent Bush from declaring all of
Operation Iraqi Freedom a "counterterrorism operation" and
otherwise ignoring Congress' attempt to intervene.)
Collins also backs the Iraq Study Group's various political,
economic and military proposals – but again, no deadlines.
In short, Collins' Iraq position is long on indignation about the
Bush administration's bumbling of the war, but short on
leverage that actually might force a change in course.
All of that leaves Collins, in a state where her constituents are
polling 3-1 against the current Iraq strategy, with the toughest
of tasks as she prepares to take on Democratic congressman
Tom Allen 473 days (and counting) from now.
She has a lot of explaining to do.
Columnist Bill Nemitz can be contacted at 791-6323 or at:
bnemitz@pressherald.com
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