There will be encomia enough for Orrin Hatch, who has been senator from Utah since Brigham Young was a beardless youth, so I hope nobody minds that I will recall him as a cheap-shot artist whose general contribution to American politics runs the historical gamut all the way from Not Entirely Awful to Not Entirely Catastrophic. For me, the defining moment of Orrin Hatch’s public career came during the extended hearings into the nomination of Clarence Thomas to a seat on the United States Supreme Court. Hatch was on the Senate Judiciary Committee. So was the late Edward Kennedy.
Hatch and Kennedy were purportedly good friends. In fact, many words were expended, and likely will be expended, on the notion that the Hatch-Kennedy friendship was The Way Things Oughta Be. (Only the relationship between Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan has been cited more often as a great bipartisan shibboleth and Lesson For Our Time.) Even Hatch himself joined in on the occasion of Kennedy’s death in 2009. From Politico:
When reflecting on my dear friend’s life, my thoughts continue to turn to the future of this great nation. With the loss of such a liberal legislative powerhouse who spoke with conviction for his side of the aisle but who was always willing to look at an issue and find a way to negotiate a bipartisan deal, I fear that Washington has become too bitterly partisan. I hope that Americans in general and Washington politicians in particular will take a lesson from Ted’s life and realize that we must aggressively advocate for our positions but realize that in the end, we have to put aside political pandering, work together and do what is best for America.
OK, fine, y’all were pals. But then came that moment in 1991, when Kennedy, whose personal peccadilloes had rendered him nearly useless as an advocate against Thomas, finally unlimbered himself and, as The Washington Post recalls for us, his good friend Orrin put on football cleats and jumped on Kennedy’s last exposed nerve.
Angry at charges against Thomas brought by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), Hatch sputtered, "If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you in Massachusetts." That left Hatch backpedaling later, insisting he had not meant to refer to the Chappaquiddick controversy.
The “backpedaling” was, of course, unmitigated bilge. If Hatch wasn’t referring to Chappaquiddick, then why did he specify that the bridge was in Massachusetts? Please to be pulling my other leg now. But there is another interesting item in that reminiscence that appeared under Hatch’s byline in Politico.
We did manage to forge partnerships on key legislation, such as the Ryan White AIDS Care Act, State Children’s Health Insurance Program, and most recently, the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. Ted was a lion among liberals, but he was also a constructive and shrewd lawmaker.
Let the record reflect that, in his last term in the Senate, Orrin Hatch went along with a legislative strategy that included an unprecedented blockage of a president’s Supreme Court nominee, as well as the continued refusal to fund fully that same children’s health program that he once was so proud of passing with his good friend, Ted Kennedy.
Also, let the record reflect that, as one of his last acts as a senator, Orrin Hatch voted for an egregious tax bill that ran contrary to decades of his own professed orthodoxy regarding The Deficit, and then, when this abomination passed, Orrin Hatch said this about the manifest grifter at the head of his party. From The Salt Lake Tribune:
“Mr. President, I have to say you are living up to everything I thought you would,” Hatch said. “You are one heckuva leader, and we’re all benefiting from it.”…
We are making headway. This is just the beginning,” Hatch continued. “If you stop and think about it, this president hasn’t even been in office for a year and look at all the things he’s been able to get done. I hope we get behind him every way we can and we’ll get this country turned around in ways that will benefit the whole world.” Hatch, who, as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, helped shepherd the tax bill through Congress, also doubled down on a comment he made recently that Trump was “one of the best I’ve served under” by saying Trump may be the best president in U.S. history.
Orrin Hatch, who plainly stayed too long at the fair, was not as horrible as he could have been. Let that be the epitaph of his career.
