Held to answer

There’s a story about the wife of Mark Hatfield being stopped by an Oregon police officer for a traffic violation. “I hate to pull rank on you, but I’m Mrs. Hatfield,” she supposedly told the officer.

It was one of those stories that my working-class parents in Medford, Ore., readily believed because, well, isn’t that the way it is? We elect ordinary mortals to do a job representing us, and we end up working for them and sometimes worshiping them.

That’s why there is something disturbing about the generous remembrances surrounding the late Senator Mark Hatfield, even though he stands out compared to what’s on the Republican or Democratic tickets now.

Almost two years ago this month, we were gearing up for a convulsion of gratitude to be heaped on Ted Kennedy for his 46 years of “public service.”

Kennedy, we would be told repeatedly (and still are), had devoted his Senate career to universal health care for all Americans. Considering that universal health care never happened, it would seem his career was less than stellar. Yet they are probably still naming things after him in Massachusetts, if not across the country.

In Oregon, Hatfield has at least seven buildings, sites or schools named after him. It isn’t as if he paid for any of these with money out of his own pocket. He didn’t. He steered billions of dollars in federal appropriations – money collected from millions of other Americans – to Oregon.

Hatfield was doing his job as our senator, but he could have spread the glory around – a reminder that he didn’t create a school or building single-handedly. As it is, he complained about his own lack of wealth. His ethical lapses involved accepting, and not reporting, expensive gifts – for example, a full scholarship for his son from a school that had solicited the senator’s support. Or a $55,000 real estate consultant’s fee paid to his wife from a man who received Hatfield’s endorsement for an oil pipeline project.

At the time Hatfield left office in 1997, the average salary for U.S. senators was $133,600, not including benefits and extras. It’s not a huge salary, but money shouldn’t be a motivating factor for a politician.

Hatfield was a righteous opponent of war, and his beliefs were shaped by what he saw during and after WWII. He was in Hiroshima a month after the bomb was dropped. After Japan he was assigned to French Indochina (later Vietnam). In an interview for “Modern American Patriot,” Hatfield recalled coming face to face with imperialism. There was a spectacular gambling casino on the hillside overlooking the harbor – like the Monte Carlo of Southeast Asia.

“And here were these gambling tables, and the French, and all of their people who represented that class, the imperialists. Hovering around that hillside were these poverty-stricken, starving Vietnamese people. Along the road into Haiphong, dead people alongside the road. Not because of bullets, but because of starvation.”

He had seen the worst of imperialism, and perhaps it didn’t occur to him that America could grow its own, lesser version.

Last week, a Chicago woman took her 1941 Piper J-3 Cub up for a short flight and found two F-16 fighter jets circling her. She had accidentally strayed into restricted airspace during a visit by President Obama who was in Chicago. But he wasn’t in Chicago for official business. He was there for himself – a 50th birthday celebration and two fundraisers.

“At the large fund-raiser in his hometown, he tried to reassure disillusioned liberals about ‘unfinished business’ to help those in need. Later, at a smaller $35,800-a-head dinner, he defended the unpopular debt package like a proud fiscal conservative,” wrote Maureen Dowd in The New York Times.

A couple of days later, Michelle Obama and one of her daughters flew to Eugene, Ore., by government plane to visit her brother, Craig Robinson, a basketball coach at OSU. According to the Register-Guard, Robinson lives near the Corvallis Country Club. Neighbors there initially didn’t know why police and security officials were stationed along streets in the area.

“We couldn’t go out and get our mail without first telling them our names,” one neighbor told the newspaper.

Sure, the president and his family require more security than the rest of us. It’s also costly. That’s why this might not be a good time for them to travel unless it’s really necessary.

We do our part in creating, and accommodating, imperial politicians. With Hatfield’s death, there will likely be more namesakes on the way.

– Pamela Fitzsimmons