True Reformers Need Principles

The partisan ideologues who think they run Congress these days picked the wrong target when they tried to bully Mark Hatfield.

The Oregon Senator, a devout Baptist, has won widespread recognition for his career-long struggle to apply faith and principle to politics - impossible as the task might seem. Back when Newt Gingrich was a liberal, scrounging for an ideology that would help him win elections, Hatfield was catching hell from conservatives who thought God and the American flag required American boys to die in Vietnam.

Hatfield opposed the war, and history vindicated him.

He has taken other stands, also rooted in his commitment to principle, that never will endear him to majority opinion. Such as his opposition to capital punishment and nuclear weapons. He has made mistakes, and has acknowledged them. And in many complex battles important to his Northwest constituents he has led with bipartisan skill.

So it says something about the knee-jerk partisanship now prevailing on Capitol Hill that Hatfield offered to resign rather than cast a vote his party demanded but his conscience opposed, for the balanced budget amendment.

Wednesday, after an unsuccessful move to strip him of his chairmanship for opposing the amendment, fellow Republicans backed off, sputtering that their real enemy was the Democrats.

In truth, neither Republicans nor Democrats are responsible for the amendment’s failure to attract the necessary votes. It failed because it is a charade.

Congress always has had the power, and it has that power today, to bring the federal budget into balance. The protracted process to ratify a constitutional amendment would have diverted energy better used directly on painful spending cuts.

If Congress is going to balance the budget, it will need more members with Hatfield’s independence, principle and courage. The Oregon Senator may not always be popular on Capital Hill, but he is respected there and at home for his willingness to take unpopular stands.

For Congress to get the budget under control it will have to take some unpopular stands indeed - overhauling entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare. By avoiding that fact during the fight over the balanced budget amendment, and then by attacking Hatfield’s principled vote, members of Congress showed themselves to be more interested in partisanship than in the crafting of solutions to the nation’s toughest problems. How sad, for all of us.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board