Orrin Hatch, the former seven-term Republican U.S. senator from Utah who died on April 23 at age 88, was one of the finest public servants of my lifetime.
Hatch’s dogged and principled conservatism created a legacy in which his civility was legendary, his legislative triumphs legion. Conservatives thrilled at his hard-fought Senate victory in 1976, which provided that year’s signal solace in the wake of Ronald Reagan losing the Republican nomination for president, and conservatives still celebrated his work 41 years later as he shepherded a major, well-designed tax cut through a partisan Senate.
“It helps immensely, as a lawyer, if you genuinely believe your client is in the right,” said Miller Baker, then a top Judiciary Committee aide to Hatch and now a judge on the U.S. Court of International Trade. “Senator Hatch genuinely believed that Clarence Thomas was innocent of Anita Hill’s allegations.”
“We [in public office] don’t mirror the political culture as much as we make it,” Hatch said in his valedictory Senate speech. “If we abandon civility, then our constituents will follow ... So to mend the nation, we must first mend the Senate.”
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