When the nomination of Michael Waltz, President Trump’s pick to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was on the brink of defeat, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, broke with her party to cast the deciding vote allowing it to advance.
She did so, she said then, because she believed Mr. Waltz, who was caught in a controversy over a Signal group chat, represented “a moderating force” in the Trump administration, and was not “someone who wants to retreat from the world.”
The move was in keeping with the philosophy of the 78-year-old senator and former governor from New Hampshire, who has toiled to preserve a space for bipartisanship in foreign policymaking that is increasingly difficult to achieve under Mr. Trump.
While most of her Democratic colleagues in Congress have opposed Mr. Trump at every turn, Ms. Shaheen, who is not seeking re-election next year, has tried to stake out a role as an apolitical operator in Washington and abroad, where she has looked for chances to telegraph to allies that the United States remains a powerful force for good around the globe, despite the president’s attacks on foreign aid and disdain for multilateralism.
It has been a lonely and sometimes disappointing pursuit.
Privately, some of her Democratic colleagues were perplexed by her decision to support Mr. Waltz, who had drawn criticism even from some Republicans after it was revealed that he had discussed war plans with top officials in the Signal chat, to which he had inadvertently invited a journalist. They quietly grumbled that Ms. Shaheen stood in the way of a prime opportunity to stop a scandal-plagued Trump nominee.
But Ms. Shaheen did not see it that way.
“There’s this view that, well, you have to agree with everybody on everything in order to work with them or to support them,” Ms. Shaheen said in an interview in her Manchester, N.H., office over the summer. “And that’s not how you get things done.”
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The post Jeanne Shaheen Wants to Make Foreign Policy Bipartisan Again appeared first on New York Times.
