278 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
Warren Rudman and Georgia Democrat Wyche Fowler crafted a substi-
tute focusing on “obscene,” which had passed muster with a majority of
the Supreme Court. The 65-31 vote was a stinging defeat for Helms, who
was furious with Gorton and the other Republican moderates.
A year later, Gorton could be found in opposition to funding works
that featured “sexual or excretory activities or organs” in a “patently of-
fensive way,” but he never surrendered to the fig-leaf wing of the Repub-
lican Party. Between 1995 and 1997, Gingrich’s right-wingers in the
House repeatedly attempted to zero out the NEA’s funding, with Gorton
saving the day in the Senate. In 1997, as chairman of the Interior appro-
priations subcommittee, he even boosted the agency’s budget by a mod-
est yet symbolically important $1 million.^7
Gorton helped sustain Bush’s controversial veto of a job discrimina-
tion bill, agreeing with the conservative contention that it would force
employers to adopt hiring quotas. He also supported Bush’s vetoes of
“family leave” legislation requiring both public and private employers of
50 or more workers to provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid time off in the
event of childbirth or illness in an employee’s immediate family.^8
Gorton was a study in unpredictability. His vote in 1992 helped the
Senate achieve an override of Bush’s veto of legislation allowing federally
funded clinics to provide abortion counseling. The House, however,
failed to achieve the necessary two-thirds majority.^9
During his first term, Gorton frequently described himself as a “pas-
sionate moderate.” Now he was in orbit with Lott, moving right, yet never
in lock-step, always with that libertarian streak. He and Lott found the
president eminently likable but a frequent disappointment, especially
when he broke his famous “read my lips—no new taxes” pledge. That one
cost the party dearly.
goonRt ’s views on inteRnAtionAL ReLAtions are a blend of Teddy
Roosevelt, George C. Marshall and Ronald Reagan. “Passionately pro-
liberty” and a student of history, he believes in American Exceptionalism.
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Rebecca West’s 1,100-page masterpiece on
the Balkans just before World War II, made a huge impression on him
when he was a senior at Dartmouth writing a thesis on Yugoslavia. One
part travelogue, one part history, all steeped in metaphor, the moral of
West’s story is the importance of resistance to evil.
Gorton’s favorite countries are “small, oppressed democracies—Israel,
the Republic of China on Taiwan and Estonia, to name three.” In the win-
ter of 1990, the Soviets denied Gorton and McGavick visas to visit Estonia