One of the sad things about American government during the late period of Republican ascendancy was the declining quality of the people elected to hold office. It seemed to me that a lot of voters were operating under the theory that to shrink the the role of government it was necessary or at least advisable to shrink the stature of the men and women running the government.
The dynamic duo of former wrestling coach Dennis Hastert and former pest control service operator Tom Delay was underwhelming in quality, even if overwhelming in terms of the scope of DeLay's political ambitions. And it was somewhat hard for me to take seriously a Senate Republican caucus that elected leaders like Trent Lott of Mississippi and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania; mainstream, these guys were not.
The same erosion of quality can be often found on a state by state basis. Take Idaho, the home of outgoing Senator Larry "I am not gay" Craig. It's hard to believe now, but Idaho once had one of America's best U.S. Senators, Frank Church. He lasted four terms and was the only Idaho Democratic Senator from Idaho ever to be re-elected. He entered the 1976 Presidential primary marathon late, after the collapse of the candidacies of Hubert Humphrey and Scoop Jackson, and carried Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Colorado in the primaries, making him the strongest presidential candidate in Idaho history.
The son and son-in-law of two New Deal Idaho Democratic governors, Church was a spell-binding orator who gave the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention the year John Kennedy was nominated while he, Church, was still in his first term.
Church was a ubiquitous Senator, creating wilderness areas in Idaho and Alaska, establishing annual COLAs for Social Security recipients, beginning the concept of no capital gains taxes for home sales with senior citizens, opposing the War in Viet Nam while working steadfastly to end it, getting funding to back up President Carter's diplomatic success with the Camp David Accords, and pushing at great political risk to have Congress adopt the Panama Canal treaties.
Then, of course, there were the separate investigations of multinationals working to destabilize foreign governments and the assassination of President Kennedy. The latter investigation helped tell Americans more than many of us wanted to know about President Kennedy's sex life and relations with mobsters, and about the abuses of power of the CIA and FBI. They also probably caused Church to lose votes in Idaho.
Closeted gay polical genius Terry Dolan, the GOP Most Valuable player in the 1980 Congressional elections that gave Republicans control of the Senate, who died of AIDS a few years later, ran the nasty, vicious campaign that brought Church down. Church's Chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee probably was a key factor in his downfall, as it made him President Carter's chief foreign policy spokesman in the Senate. Church, too, died a few years after his defeat.
Frank Church did not duck the big issues. He worked hard to make progress to solve them, and his widow Bethine has continued his work as a volunteer in numerous worthwhile organizations in Idaho and beyond.
Given the Larry Craig scandal, there are two ironies, one of which is tragic, in Church's career. The first is that the guy who defeated him, Congressman Steve Symms, was undone by allegations of adultery in the aftermath of his divorce, and retired from the Senate in 1992 to become a lobbyist.
The tragic irony is that Church's brother Admiral William Church was gay in an era in which that fact alone was almost universally considered scandalous. In the 1960's, he was victimized by a national ring of blackmailers to whom he paid $5000 in hush money. Visited at the Pentagon by a prosecutor with a subpeona, Admiral Church fled to Maryland and killed himself; testifying against his blackmailers would likely have ended his military career and brought shame to the Senator.
Senator Church's son, the Rev. Dr. Forrester Church, of New York City, is a leading theologian in strong opposition to the religious right. The author of a good number of books, he has a graceful writing style that makes complex theological issues approachable to those not intensely familiar with them. Senator Church would have every reason to be proud of him if he was alive today.
