Can some members of Congress be trusted to regularly take good ideas from ALL political points of view, and meld them into legislation that’s at once pragmatic and imaginative, cost-effective and far-seeing?
A poll by Radical Middle proponent Mark Satin ranks "transpartisan" members of Congress.
His top two? Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine and Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey. Minnesota Rep. Jim Ramstad, California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar and Connecticut Sen. Joe Leiberman are also named. Among presidential hopefuls, McCain and Obama make the cut.
I can't speak for others on the list, but Rush Holt was a good guy when I knew him in college and shortly after. One of the few PhDs in Congress, he was studying physics at NYU last time I saw him. He was working on a study for the transit authority to determine why the New York subways were so noisy.
The answer, it turned out, was the trains' wheels were out of round. The solution was to replace all the wheels, but that was too expensive, so the subways stayed noisy.
I don't think that experience inspired him to go into public service, but it probably helped shape a certain pragmatism once he did.
