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Townhall...
The
Death of a Principled Moderate
By Cal Thomas
8/11/2011
Mark
Hatfield, 89, who died last
weekend in his native Oregon, was the first Christian politician I
recall
meeting in Washington, which is to say he did more than keep a Bible on
his
desk. He sought to keep its words and teachings and its main
“Character” in his
heart.
When
we first met in the early ‘70s I
was in the middle of my own “faith journey,” trying to sort out what
Scripture
teaches about this world and the next and to see if it could match my
conservative political leanings. Hatfield suggested to me that the two
kingdoms
-- of God and of the world -- sometimes intersect, but more often
diverge. He
was criticized by some political conservatives for aligning himself
with
liberal Democratic Senator George McGovern against the war in Vietnam.
The
McGovern-Hatfield amendment, had it passed, would have set a deadline
for the
end of U.S. military operations in South Vietnam. McGovern-Hatfield
became “the
most outstanding defiance of executive power regarding the war prior to
1971,”
writes Wikipedia. That defiance is repeated today in debates over wars
in
Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and the use of U.S. military might around
the
world.
Hatfield
and McGovern were right about
Vietnam. The reason more of us didn’t recognize it at the time was that
proponents of the war (most of whom didn’t have to fight it) wrapped
themselves
in the flag and treated any criticism of Presidents Johnson and Nixon
and their
prosecution of the war as unpatriotic. Sound familiar?
In
1981, after his elevation to
chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, I met with him in his
upgraded
office. This when what was known as the “Religious Right” was flexing
its
muscles in the aftermath of Ronald Reagan’s victory and the defeat of
five
liberal Democratic senators, including McGovern.
Hatfield
told me he had been through
the religious wars before. He mentioned the Scofield Reference Bible,
which to
many self-identified fundamentalist Christians was the only “true” and
reliable
translation. Some regarded any other translation as “heretical.”
Hatfield
thought it more important to apply the teachings of Jesus, rather than
argue
about “jots and tittles.”
Hatfield
wasn’t perfect. He was the
target of two ethics investigations. One involved his wife, Antoinette.
In
1984, Mrs. Hatfield, a realtor, received $55,000 in fees from Basil
Tsakos, a
Greek financier, “while Hatfield was promoting Tsakos’ trans-Africa
pipeline
proposal,” Salon.com reports. “Hatfield denied wrongdoing.” The
Hatfields
apologized and donated the money to charity. And in 1992, Hatfield,
writes the
Washington Post, “was formally rebuked by the Senate ethics committee
for not
disclosing more than $42,000 in gifts from friends and lobbyists.” He
apologized again and was later cleared of the charges. Mostly, though,
Hatfield
lived up to the “St. Mark” label applied to him by his admirers.
Hatfield
was thought of as a
consistent “pro-lifer.” He opposed abortion (though he never worked to
limit
it), the death penalty and war. In 1982, he told the Christian Science
Monitor,
“There is to me a direct ratio between the increase of our arsenals and
the
diminishing sense of national security. There comes a time in a
nation’s life
when additional money spent for rockets and bombs, far from
strengthening
national security, will actually weaken national security -- when there
are
people who are hungry and not fed, people who are cold and not
clothed.” That
last line is straight from the teachings of Jesus.
Some
of his fellow Christians may not
have always agreed with Mark Hatfield, but they couldn’t accuse him of
hypocrisy. He consistently lived by the standards he professed and
challenged
others to do the same. Though we may have disagreed on some political
issues,
our common faith kept us close. In the end that is all that really
mattered --
to Mark Hatfield and to me.
Read
it at Townhall
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