Former Oregon Sen. Mark O. Hatfield, 89, died yesterday. The Portland Oregonian posted an excellent obituary about the World War 2 veteran’s long career. Read the article here. The piece by Jeff Mapes makes me realize me how influential the evangelical Christian Senator Hatfield, the son of two deeply religious Baptists, was in shaping conservative Republican politics. Hatfield was anti-war, deeply religious, and a serious advocate of environmentalism. In other words, he was an early trailblazer, pardon the Oregon pun, in fusing fundamentalist religion with a liberal, welfare-statist approach to government. Though he was considered a maverick, out-of-step liberal anomaly in Republican circles during most of his 30-year career in the United States Senate, and he had also served as Oregon’s governor, Mark Hatfield was a forerunner to today’s dogmatic Big Government advocates on the left and on the right. Mark Hatfield paved the way for faith-based liberals and Big Government conservatives. In a sad coincidence, according to the Oregonian obituary, Senator Hatfield’s grandson, a U.S. Marine who had served in Iraq also named Mark, died of an undisclosed cause in Connecticut at the age of 25 four weeks ago. I wrote about military suicides over two years ago, and I wonder if Sen. Hatfield’s grandson, like so many soldiers enlisted in America’s asinine wars of self-sacrifice, killed himself. While I disagreed with Sen. Hatfield on nearly every issue, when I met the late senator and his son Mark during a political campaign, I personally found both gentlemen to be as kind and cordial as the article suggests. He certainly made an impact on American government.
