George Mitchell is 90. After a cancer diagnosis several years ago, he celebrated his latest milestone in August without fanfare or any public notice, other than a retrospective interview with State House veteran Don Carrigan.
When I spoke to him last week, he emphasized that “I’m feeling better now,” following surgery necessitated by a weakened immune system, in turn the result of chemotherapy keeping the cancer at bay. “I get around OK, but I sleep a lot more,” he said.
Instead of a party, he went out on the water near his home in Seal Harbor to a favorite island, accompanied by his wife, Heather, and his three children. On the cruise back from “a wonderful day,” he turned to Heather and said, “I’m going to try to hang around for a few more.”
The statesman-politician who many Mainers still picture as U.S. Senate majority leader (1988-94) had an extraordinary career after he stepped down.
Against all odds, he listened, cajoled, persuaded and out-waited fiercely contending Protestant and Catholic parties in Northern Ireland to produce the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended widespread violence from “The Troubles,” though conflict remains.
He was 75 when President Obama appointed him special envoy to the Middle East in 2009. Prospects for an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians were initially promising, even though the 1993 Oslo agreement that created the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank had long since run out of steam.
As Mitchell explained it earlier, at the 2000 Camp David talks sponsored by President Clinton, there was only one partner who could deliver, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Yasser Arafat headed the Palestine Liberation Organization committed to destroying Israel, much like Hamas.
“While Arafat said he had renounced violence, there’s no doubt he did not adhere to that fully,” Mitchell said. The 2009 talks, however, had two potential peacemakers, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Back then, Mitchell said Abbas “has been clear and outspoken throughout his tenure in opposing violence, and stressing that the only way forward is through peaceful negotiation.”
Then Olmert lost a parliamentary election and Benjamin Netanyahu returned as prime minister. The chance for peace was gone, something I think about almost daily as horrendous news arrives from Gaza.
Mitchell, notably unsentimental about these things, can dispassionately describe why some peace negotiations succeed and others fail, though failure seem more common.
Last week, we were talking about events much earlier, when Mitchell first entered Maine politics. He made a surprisingly unsuccessful run for governor in 1974, then a shockingly successful comeback to beat Congressman Dave Emery for the Senate in 1982 after initial polling went against him 2-1.
He’d been appointed by Gov. Joe Brennan to succeed Ed Muskie in 1980. In doing so, Brennan passed over the more popular and accomplished Ken Curtis, who’d been the first Democrat, and first governor, to win consecutive four-year terms.
It’s a familiar story. When Brennan asked Mitchell, then serving as a federal judge, to consider the Senate, he asked only two things — first, as Muskie requested, that he’d keep his staff on.
That wasn’t a problem; Mitchell knew them from working on Muskie’s vice presidential and presidential campaigns.
It was the second, Brennan’s own request, that caught his attention: Mitchell should “vote your judgment and your conscience, and what’s best for Maine and the country.”
Then, Mitchell said something I’d never heard before. Brennan’s words “had a profound effect on me,” he said.
As senator, he developed a habit he employed for each of 6,000 Senate votes.
During the 15 minutes before a vote “when the lights are flashing and the bells ringing” Mitchell created an exercise: “I imagined myself speaking to a group of Maine people who disagreed with me, and how I could justify the vote to them.”
I’ve never heard a better description of what it takes to represent — to really represent — one’s constituents.
Mitchell took many votes as Senate leader he knew might be unpopular back home. Yet I’ve rarely talked to anyone who held this against him, who didn’t ultimately agree Mitchell had good reasons for his position.
If only the warring senators and representatives we hear about every day would do the same, Congress could suddenly become functional.
All too many of those elected to high office think only of “pleasing the base,” while ignoring many they’re supposed to represent — sometimes a majority — who disagree.
We need legislators, and presidents, who constantly think about serving the people — all the people — and can explain their votes to their harshest critics.
It’s hard work, but essential if we’re ever to emerge from our current malaise.
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