Senate’s Evil Troll Is In Spite Mode

Olympia Snowe never realized that one committee chairman had the power to stop a confirmation hearing. She does now.

The Maine senator - along with John Chafee of Rhode Island - has been trying to gather signatures of Republican senators on a letter urging Sen. Jesse Helms to grant William Weld a hearing on his nomination as ambassador to Mexico.

She has gotten only eight so far - including herself and Chafee.

“Frankly, senators are reluctant to confront Chairman Helms,” she said Tuesday night. “They’re hesitant to make a public gesture like signing a letter. I just think it’s wrong. He’s a stellar appointment.”

Bill Weld’s banana-peel spill, from popular Massachusetts governor to out-of-work crazy person, holds a lesson: The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for.

Feeling restless, Weld agreed to get out of the way of Joe Kennedy and go to Mexico. Now he has been deserted by nearly everyone.

The Clintonites are watching the GOP fight with relish. The Republicans are irritated with Weld for starting an ideological spat.

“The word ‘dilettante’ comes to mind,” said one Republican senator who refused to sign the petition on Weld’s behalf. “He lost his chance for the Senate and then he played squash every day, and then he decided it might be fun to go to the beach in Mexico. Now he has resigned, and when Mr. Weld calls on the Senate, that’s going to be different than when Gov. Weld calls.”

Weld, who turns 52 Thursday, is everything you would want in a public servant. He reads writers other than Grisham and Clancy. He doesn’t rely on focus groups to form his opinions. He has a nice relationship with his family. He has a quirky sense of humor. He practices a politics of tolerance. He should have been embraced as a classy addition to a diplomatic corps too often used to pay off cronies and donors. (Remember John Gavin?)

But, in a bit of reefer madness, Sen. Helms (R-Tobacco) objects to the former federal prosecutor’s humane position supporting the medical use of marijuana.

Helms clearly resents the Brahmin as an avatar of the Eastern Establishment sorts who treated him like a senescent redneck during his last two Senate bids.

Snowe says that Weld complicated matters by blasting Helms, even though the governor was just trying to “reignite” a White House that had abandoned him.

“It’s typical of this administration to let people hang out there,” she said. “Why isn’t the president fighting for this highly regarded nominee? Is he golfing? Is he in the hot tub?”

Chafee agreed that Weld had been too tart about Helms: “My father always told me, ‘Don’t insult the crocodile till you’ve crossed the stream.”’

Call me a dreamer, but I thought it was pretty exhilarating to insult the crocodile right there in midstream.

For decades, people have been dying to see someone stand up to Jesse Helms for his racially charged campaigns or his tyrannical behavior on ambassadorial appointments, international accords or foreign aid.

Bill Weld finally had the guts to do it. After correctly assessing that the White House had decided that its relationship with the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee was more important than its relationship with Bill Weld - Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, after all, hasn’t been giving Weld any T-shirts that say “Someone at the State Department Loves Me” - the governor let loose. He told the truth - that it is wrong for one senator to be able to arbitrarily, randomly, ideologically stop a qualified nominee from getting a hearing.

Only in Washington, which has become even more of a go-along, get-along place during the Clinton era, would the introduction of principle be seen as a sign of instability.

“Weld didn’t demonstrate his diplomatic skills in the last two weeks,” said a Helms spokesman, Marc Thiessen. “He demonstrated that he knows exactly how to insert his penny loafer into his mouth.”

There are those who think Weld is just setting himself up as a hero to soccer moms, with an eye toward 2000, or 2004. What if he is?

He is fighting the impolitic fight. He is crusading without focus groups. No wonder the town is upset.

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