intRoduction 7
thete-LA t RdAy chARge that Gorton is a conservative ideologue—or, for
that matter, any variety of ideologue—is demonstrably silly. A charter
member of the progressive “mainstream” Evans wing of the Washington
State GOP, he went on to vote conservative about 60 percent of the time
during his 18 years in the U.S. Senate. VoteMatch called him a “Moderate
Libertarian Conservative.” As a member of Majority Leader Trent Lott’s
inner circle, Gorton gravitated right in his last term, 1995–2001, yet still
ranked as only the 33rd most conservative senator on National Journal’s
annual analysis of roll-call votes. A progressive as a state legislator and
attorney general, Gorton as a U.S. senator was always closer to the middle
on social issues and more conservative on foreign policy. He developed
genuine friendships with a number of Democrats, notably his seatmate,
Henry M. Jackson.
Gorton got a gold star for attendance, missing only one percent of
all roll-call votes. As a sponsor of bills, he was somewhere between a
leader and a follower—a consensus-builder who co-sponsored five times
as many as he introduced. He actually read practically everything set be-
fore him, sniffing out ambiguities and opportunities. To his opponents’
distress—and grudging admiration—he was an absolute master of the
congressional “rider,” attaching pet projects to unrelated legislation with
crafty dexterity. One such was the timber “salvage” rider that thwarted
environmentalists bent on curtailing logging. Another was the famous
“midnight rider” he cooked up to secure permits for a cyanide-leach gold
mine in Eastern Washington. Gorton often caught them napping be-
cause he and his staff were one of the hardest-working teams on Capitol
Hill. The senator accused of being aloof prided himself on constituent
relations.
Losing his Senate seat in 2000 turned out to be a blessing in disguise,
personally and arguably for his country as well. To bipartisan praise, Gor-
ton went on to serve with distinction on blue-ribbon panels studying the
Bush-Gore vote-counting snafu in Florida and the explosion that killed 15
and injured 180 at BP’s Texas refinery in 2005. That commission warned
of attitudes that, largely unaddressed, contributed to the disaster in the
Gulf of Mexico five years later.
His service on the 9/11 Commission ranks as the singular achievement
of a half-century in public life. Cross-examining witnesses with remark-
able acuity; working behind the scenes to bridge divisions; boring into
bureaucratic fiefdoms to unearth the facts, politics be damned, Gorton
was a star.
He’s so alive that it’s hard to imagine him ever being dead. When he’s