Credit... Part 2

If you thought I was kidding, exaggerating, or hallucinating in yesterday's homage to Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, take a look at the outgoing Senator's op-ed in today's New York Times. Mr. Chafee writes:

Back in December 2000, after one of the closest elections in our nation's history, Vice President-elect Dick Cheney was the guest at a weekly lunch meeting of a small group of centrist Republicans. Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and I were honored to have the opportunity to visit with him on the eve of a session of Congress in which, because of Republican defeats, the Senate would be evenly divided at 50-50.

As we sat in Senator Specter's cozy hideaway office and discussed the coming session, I was startled to hear the vice president dismiss suggestions of compromise and instead emphasize an aggressively partisan agenda that included significant tax cuts, the abandonment of international agreements and a muscular, unilateral foreign policy.

I was incredulous. Instead of a new atmosphere of cooperation and civility which, after all, had been the promise of the Bush-Cheney campaign, we seemed ready to return to the poisonous partisanship that marked the Republican-Congress - Clinton White House years.

In response to the vice president's comments I quickly sent him a letter to reinforce the views I expressed at the lunch...

The excerpts of Chafee's letter that follow certainly reinforce my view of the man as a real asset to the nation - and as a pragmatist who understood from the first the necessity of bipartisanship in representing a populace split right down the ideological middle.

Sadly,

...my suggestions were not heeded. Our country faces daunting challenges. I believe my letter of six years ago is worth reviewing as the administration prepares for its last two years in office and as Republicans contemplate the direction our party will head in the future.

Can't we find something for this stalwart individual to do when the 110th Congress gets rolling in January?