Mark O. Hatfield: Oregon political history
A short biography is long on details about an influential figure.
A longtime Oregon politics reporter asked me last week if I knew Richard Etulain. I did indeed. Etulain, an Oregon historian, wrote several book reviews that I edited, and he’s a prolific author and editor himself. The reporter then asked if I’d read Etulain’s recent biography of Mark O. Hatfield. I hadn’t, so I decided it was time.
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They called him St. Mark.
That was one of the first things I learned about Mark O. Hatfield after I moved to Oregon. Somehow, I’d managed to remain oblivious to his existence, despite majoring in government (the name my university gave to political science) while he was still very much alive. But once in Oregon, there was no escaping him.
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Nine takeaways about Hatfield, one for each of his decades (he died at age 89 in 2011):
Raised in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, in the town of Dallas and the state capital of Salem, Hatfield is in Etulain’s depiction a living example of the state motto, “She flies with her own wings.” During his political career, he was labeled everything from radical to progressive to liberal to moderate to independent to conservative.
His political career was officially 46 years, but his political consciousness started earlier. To get a sense of the span of his political life, consider that the first president he admired was Herbert Hoover, whom he met as a young man, and the last president he worked with was Bill Clinton.
His staunch antiwar stance, particularly during the Vietnam years, was likely connected to his combat experience at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, two horrendously bloody World War II sites.
He was an evangelical Christian who warned the public about right-wing believers he called Fundamentalists “who wrap their Bibles in the American flag … who equate patriotism with the belief in national self-righteousness.”
His religious beliefs led him to push for aiding the hungry and powerless, in part by reducing excessive military expenditures and by limiting personal food consumption.
His profile in the Republican party rose high enough for him to become a leading contender for the vice presidential slot in Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign — enough so that, Etualain notes, a Miami newspaper published an edition with the headline “Nixon and Hatfield.”
He sought for the voting age to be lowered to 18, perhaps thinking of his younger, politically engaged self.
In a state in which registered Democratic voters outnumbered registered GOP voters, the lifelong Republican never lost an election.
“St. Mark” was not perfect. One political opponent reminded voters that a teenage Hatfield had hit and killed a young girl who he said darted out in front of his car (he was not charged with any crime). And late in his career he was rebuked twice by the Senate Ethics Committee over gifts he accepted.
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Etulain’s book was published shortly before an extensive collection of his materials at Willamette University was unsealed. That leaves “Mark O. Hatfield” a much slimmer volume than Brent Walth’s excellent “Fire at Eden’s Gate,” about similarly influential Hatfield contemporary Tom McCall. Etulain nevertheless sketches an engaging picture of one of Oregon’s best known politicians.