By John Nichols

Orrin Hatch referred last year to his long Senate tenure as “my whole stink­ing career.”

That was a fair assess­ment of the Utah Republican’s 41 years in Washington.

Seventy-five per­cent of Utah vot­ers told poll­sters last fall that they did not want the sen­a­tor to seek reelec­tion in 2018.

Hatch took the hint this week, announc­ing that he plans to retireafter four decades of plac­ing spe­cial inter­ests and the per­son­al pow­er that is obtained by serv­ing them above the pub­lic inter­est and the peo­ple whose lives are made dra­mat­i­cal­ly worse when gov­ern­ment aban­dons them.

Few, aside from President Trump, Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and the lob­by­ists for the spe­cial inter­ests Hatch served, will miss one of the most egre­gious hyp­ocrites ever to serve in a cham­ber where men­dac­i­ty has always been well represented.

Hatch was elect­ed to the Senate in 1976, after run­ning a cam­paign that antic­i­pat­ed the crude­ly divi­sive strate­gies and relent­less neg­a­tiv­i­ty that has come to char­ac­ter­ize con­tem­po­rary cam­paign­ing. Hatch was a pio­neer­ing prac­ti­tion­er of the new pol­i­tics of shame­less pre­tense that would come to define Washington. A Republican who had moved to Utah from Pennsylvania, he claimed that the incum­bent Democratic sen­a­tor, who had been born and raised in Utah, was out of touch with the val­ues and the con­cerns of the state.

That was a fan­ta­sy devel­oped by the polit­i­cal con artists who had the mal­leable new­com­er run on the issue of term lim­its. Hatch made a joke of incum­bent Frank Moss’s three terms of hon­or­able ser­vice in the Senate: “What do you call a Senator who’s served in office for 18 years? You call him home.” And Hatch promised not to serve for too long in Washington.

Moss was not a typ­i­cal politi­cian. He was one of the most effec­tive pub­lic ser­vants of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. While study­ing at George Washington University’s Law School in Washington, he worked dur­ing Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first term with the National Recovery Administration, the Resettlement Administration, and the Farm Credit Administration. After grad­u­at­ing, he joined the legal staff of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, serv­ing dur­ing the peri­od from 1937 to 1939 when it was chaired by future US Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. Upon his return to Utah, Moss was elect­ed to a Salt Lake City’s Municipal Court judge­ship; but when the call of duty came with the bomb­ing of Pearl Harbor, he signed up for US Army Air Corps, serv­ing in Europe through much of World War II. Back home, he was again elect­ed as a judge and then became a coun­ty pros­e­cu­tor before his elec­tion to the US Senate in the Democratic wave elec­tion of 1958.

As a sen­a­tor from Utah, Moss backed civ­il rights and women’s rights, pro­mot­ed nuclear dis­ar­ma­ment and opposed the war in Vietnam. But what earned him praise as “the con­science of the Senate” was his advo­ca­cy for those who could not afford to hire lobbyists.

The vet­er­an of the Roosevelt admin­is­tra­tion brought a bold New Deal vision to the Senate where he out­lined an agen­da that sought to expand access to health care (as an orig­i­nal spon­sor of Medicaid leg­is­la­tion), to pro­tect the envi­ron­ment (as a lead­ing advo­cate for the cre­ation of new nation­al parks) and, above all, to put fed­er­al pol­i­cy on the side of con­sumers. Moss used his posi­tion as chair of the Senate Commerce Committee’s sub­com­mit­tee on con­sumer pro­tec­tion to spon­sor leg­is­la­tion that took on the tobac­co indus­try (spon­sor­ing the 1966 Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act that required cig­a­rette com­pa­nies to include warn­ings about health threats on cig­a­rette pack­ages and erect­ed bar­ri­ers to tobac­co adver­tis­ing on radio and tele­vi­sion), cracked down on the man­u­fac­tur­ers of dan­ger­ous toys and poi­so­nous prod­ucts (spon­sor­ing the Toy Safety Act and the Poison Prevention Packaging Act) and forced man­u­fac­tur­ers to stop rip­ping off con­sumers (work­ing with Washington Democrat Warren Magnuson to enact the ground­break­ing Consumer Product Warranty and Guarantee Act). He led inves­ti­ga­tions of elder abuse, went after irre­spon­si­ble doc­tors and worked with Idaho Senator Frank Church to pro­vide fed­er­al sup­port for hos­pice programs.

In oth­er words, far from being out of touch, Moss was deter­mined to serve peo­ple in Utah and across the coun­try who had been vic­tim­ized by cor­po­ra­tions. Unfortunately, as the cor­po­ra­tions and their allies learned how to influ­ence not just the leg­isla­tive process but the elec­toral process, a space was made for the likes of Orrin Hatch — a can­di­date The Salt Like Tribune referred to as “an aggres­sive, TV-ready opponent.”

Hatch’s attack cam­paign pre­vailed in 1976 and Moss was no longer able to lead the charge on behalf of cit­i­zens and con­sumers, of work­ing peo­ple and the most vul­ner­a­ble Americans.

Over the next four decades, Hatch would serve as dra­mat­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent sen­a­tor from his pre­de­ces­sor. Self-absorbed and boast­ful, Hatch cal­cu­lat­ed that his polit­i­cal future would be best served by align­ing with those who could write big cam­paign checks. Hatch took care of his polit­i­cal bene­fac­tors and seemed always to be plot­ting his next move (angling for a place on the Supreme Court or on a Republican pres­i­den­tial tick­et, elbow­ing his way into key com­mit­tee assign­ments). When Democrats con­trolled the Senate, Hatch was ready to cut deals, even with lib­er­als like Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy. When Republicans took charge, how­ev­er, he became a pre­dictably shame­less par­ti­san — as when the same sen­a­tor who repeat­ed­ly sav­aged pro­fes­sor Anita Hill on behalf of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas played a crit­i­cal role in block­ing the Supreme Court nom­i­na­tion of Merrick Garland (whom he acknowl­edged was an out­stand­ing jurist) in order to pre­vent President Barack Obama’s nom­i­nee from get­ting a place on the high court.

Élite media out­lets gave Hatch plen­ty of cov­er­age, and cov­er, because the relent­less self-pro­mot­er was always ready to deliv­er a talk­ing point or appear on a polit­i­cal talk show. But they could not obscure the fact that of his steady hypocrisy — which includ­ed the aban­don­ment of his term-lim­its pledge.

Across four decades, Hatch’s stead­i­est default posi­tions were as a robot­ic ally of the cor­po­rate inter­ests and bil­lion­aire donors from whom he col­lect­ed tens of mil­lions and as an errand boy for Republican pres­i­dents up to and includ­ing Donald Trump.Responsible Republicans kept their dis­tance from Trump, but Hatch declared: “We’re going to keep fight­ing, and we’re going to make this the great­est pres­i­den­cy that we’ve seen, not only in gen­er­a­tions but maybe ever.”

Last fall, the sen­a­tor from Utah played a crit­i­cal role in mov­ing the GOP tax bill through the Senate Finance Committee he chaired.

As crude as ever, Hatch blew up over the sug­ges­tion that he was act­ing as what he has always been: the manser­vant of cor­po­rate capital.

Before a key vote on the tax bill, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown said: “I just think it would be nice, just tonight, before we go home, to just acknowl­edge, ‘Well, this tax cut real­ly is not for the mid­dle class — it’s for the rich.’”

The chair­man explod­ed, call­ing the crit­i­cism “bull crap” and grip­ing that: “I real­ly resent any­body who says I’m just doing this for the rich. Give me a break.

In fact, Hatch was just doing it for the rich — as he did through­out a Senate career that will nev­er be mis­tak­en for “pub­lic service.”

Frank Moss was a pub­lic ser­vant who was will­ing to risk his career in order to rep­re­sent the peo­ple ver­sus the pow­er­ful. He start­ed off on the staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission and remained a watch­dog to the end.

Ironically, the lat­est cam­paign finance reports for Orrin Hatch show that the biggest source of cam­paign mon­ey for the Senate Finance Committee chair in recent years has been the secu­ri­ties indus­try and relat­ed spe­cial inter­ests. He remained their lap­dog to the end. https://​www​.then​ation​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​f​o​u​r​-​y​e​a​r​s​-​o​f​-​u​k​r​a​i​n​e​-​a​n​d​-​t​h​e​-​m​y​t​h​s​-​o​f​-​m​a​i​d​an/