Brunswick’s own and Maine’s Independent senator, Angus King is up for reelection. Near six years have passed since he was voted to represent his state in the upper house of the U.S. Congress. Unlike Maine’s senior Sen. Susan Collins, he was elected by a predominantly more liberal-progressive based constituency.

That base can hardly be pleased with his decision to support Mike Pompeo as President Trump’s choice for replacing Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State.

Pompeo’s as Tea Party as they come, bar none. The liberal-progressive bar for worst possible candidate to head the Department of State couldn’t have been set any higher.

Of course, Tillerson himself was liberally condemned as far, far too far right when he was chosen to represent U.S. vested interests in the world. How quickly perspectives change in hindsight, and when centrist politics repeatedly undergo seismic shifts further and further away from even moderately progressive leanings. Now, intractable take-no-prisoners Trumpian resistance fighters must be wondering how wise it was to wish for Tillerson’s dismissal as chief foreign affairs adviser.

Similarly, Hillary Clinton was viewed with equal fear and loathing from the other side of the aisle when she somehow garnered sufficient conservative support from Congress, granting a very much comparably hated President Obama his nominee. Then again, compared to her replacement John Kerry, Hillary was rightfully judged as far, far more suitably hawkish.

The world’s response to Pompeo’s bombastic direction of the CIA being elevated to a secretary of state tag-team partnership with an ideologically kindred presidency is a difficult call. Pompeo’s swearing-in didn’t seem to either enhance or nix the unfolding possibilities of peace between the two Koreas. Given that Trump’s reflexive rather than reflective political partnerships routinely head south after the initial first rounds, that world stage drama’s outcome will likely depend on how successful Pompeo’s new position is in keeping his boss from feeling upstaged.

Angus King’s a reactive politician. Mike Pompeo’s a reactionary one. My reaction to King’s vote for Pompeo was one of profound disappointment but not of any real surprise. There’d been no public display of any great personal angst preceding King’s deliberation. Maine’s junior senator appeared quite comfortable in borrowing a well-demonstrated successful page from Maine’s senior senator’s playbook. Collins has repeatedly optioned her perfected political dodge of finalizing a voting position after the outcome is assured, thus losing nothing strategically while advantageously playing to the opposing side’s constituency, bonus points in an election year.

For Sen. Collins, whether one’s up for reelection or not matters relatively little. Perennial posturing in courting electability is her established forte. For five consecutive years she’s been lionized by the Luger Center as “setting the national standard for bipartisan productivity.”

Though Collins vastly outperforms King in actually sponsoring rather than co-sponsoring legislation, both have a less than impressive record of any really notable legislative accomplishment. What both excel at is somehow, nevertheless, generating great visibility as feel-good politicians, both back home and nationally.

On NBC’s Meet the Press, Sen. Collins unequivocally expressed her admiration for Pompeo in supporting his confirmation. With her next senate race a distant 2020, no playbook calculation likely applied unless prompted by a rumored future Tea Party primary challenge from a resurgent Paul LePage.

After his vote, King released a public statement expressing “serious reservations in a number of areas” regarding Pompeo’s outspoken arch-conservative interventionist worldview, but rationalized that a president’s nominee should be accommodated unless “manifestly unqualified or has a record inconsistent with the mission … they are called upon to lead.”

Just earlier this April, King headlined a Portland NRCM forum promoting progressive environmental policies as the best defense of both international and homeland security. Pompeo manifestly denies any such threat, at home or abroad, despite the countless dead canaries that conservative tunnel vision, in its corporate welfare allegiance, refuses to recognize. Apparently, King and Collins didn’t consider that a serious disqualification or inconsistent with Pompeo heading the State Department’s responsibility to confront the real world rather than an ideologically imagined one.

Bernie Sanders, that other Independent senator, and an equally independent Elizabeth Warren vehemently voted against Pompeo. Both reasoned a long list of Pompeo’s disqualifications. Their own individual ideological opposition remains neither compromised nor calculatingly bipartisan.

Supposedly, conventional wisdom says that voters want a more cooperative governance, less partisanship, less divisiveness. Our two senators seem to well understand that. If statesmanship alone constituted leadership I would have no issue with either King or Collins. The rub is that real leadership requires risk-taking and Maine’s current delegation serves well, very well, but as referees or bench warmers rather than ever advancing a crucial political football themselves. Their concerns appear foremost preoccupied with staying in the gamesmanship of incremental political gain.

Conventional wisdom also holds that the “Swamp” needs desperate draining. Pompeo’s the type of ultra hawk that’s led America from one quagmire into another. In voting for Pompeo, senators Collins and King have woefully mired themselves in the familiar quicksand of an entrenched politics-as-usual.

Unfortunately, money and name recognition remain foremost enablers of reelection and Maine’s disappointing establishment senators have plenty of both to sustain their winningly faux populist appeal.

Gary Anderson lives in Bath.