by Keith C. Burris
The announcement by Sen. Rob Portman that he will retire at the end of his current Senate term is bad news for Ohio and the Republican Party, and worse news for the Senate and the country.
He’s one of the good guys.
By one of the good guys I don’t mean he is a nice fellow. I mean he is a working senator. None of his possible replacements will be the kind of senator he has been.
The Senate is mostly a talking place these days, and a very good address.
It hasn’t been a great lawmaking and deliberate body, really, since the 1960s.
And this frustrates doers, like Portman, and ex-mayors and ex-governors, who earlier in their careers were able to see tangible results to their work.
There is no tougher job than being a mayor. But it is an action job.
Bernie Sanders, an ex-mayor, is so worn down by the Senate that he wanted to be President Joe Biden’s secretary of labor — an almost invisible job. But Sanders is right: It is a job where you can have a direct, positive effect on people’s lives.
Being a senator, especially in a safe seat, is a much more visible, prestigious and cushy job. And it’s a place from which to seek the presidency. The Cabinet is not.
But, unless you were there in the 1960s, or you were Ted Kennedy at his zenith, or John McCain in his later years, the Senate is not a place to make an impact.
Rob Portman wanted it to be.
The Senate is a unique and uniquely intimate institution. Any senator with a good mind and imagination can become a senator in his own image. Wayne Morse did it. William Proxmire did it. Pat Moynihan did it. Philip Hart did it. And I think Mitt Romney is trying to do it.
Portman decided, early on, who he would be as a senator. First, he would be a bipartisan senator between elections. That is, he would find Democratic partners to work with him on any issue he took on.
Second, he would focus on passing legislation, and legislation that had a direct and measurable human result.
In recent years he has focused on two issues, in particular — the opioid crisis and human trafficking.
Neither of those will get you a lot of votes, in Ohio or any other state.
But Portman worked those two issues with his colleagues, and his staff with their staffs, and, something else highly unusual for a senator, he dug deeply into both. He read the scholarship, got to know the experts, and got to know victims, too.
It is no exaggeration to say that his work saved and rescued fellow human beings — real people, really hurting.
Mind you, he is a good Republican and true conservative. He is for tax cuts, originalist judges, a strong defense, small business and leaving people alone. He’s a free-trader by nature who began to tilt more toward managed trade when he saw what free trade did to Ohio.
But he is also a Republican who believes in the norms and practices of civility, and tries to live by them.
And he believes the Senate is an honor repaid with hard work.
And that kind of Republican will never be able to satisfy the hard-core Trumpists, though he voted with Donald Trump’s administration 95% of the time. He’s just not angry enough. He’s not a hater. He’s a builder.
Does anyone think the nihilists, like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, will ever give anything back to the Senate?
Portman has always told people like me: It’s not as bad as you think in the Congress. Turn off the TV lights and get away from the high-visibility fights and you can accomplish a lot.
When he made his announcement last month he said the opposite: There are two hyperpartisan tribes, he said. The main congressional pursuit today is not proximate solutions to insoluble problems — it is a one-liner or perfect sound bite for the talking heads TV talk show. “Hard to find the middle ground,” he said, with dry understatement.
Some Republicans have already given up on the hope that the Democrats will run a moderate and cooperative Senate. And they know it is largely their fault. Mitch McConnell was the great obstructionist. And he has rendered the Senate he loves dysfunctional.
Now it’s payback time.
Other Republican senators have expressly given up on their own current party — notably Romney.
Sen. Pat Toomey has become something of a truth-teller since he announced his retirement.
I do think the moderate Republicans and Democrats still in the Senate, as long as they remain in the Senate, can play a unique and important role in retarding the volume and reach of both reflexive leftism and pandering, cheap nationalism. I count about 10 of them. And good for them.
But so much damage has been done. The late Mike Mansfield led the Senate with reverence for the chamber itself and respect for his colleagues. He was a compromiser, a reconciler, a legislator, not a TV performer. The same was true of Howard Baker. And Bob Dole.
Portman carved out a unique role in his time: Get legislation passed. Make sure it actually improves human life. Legislate with Democrats.
He’s needed now more than ever. And he’s done.
Keith C. Burris is editor, vice president and editorial director of Block Newspapers. Email: kburris@post-gazette.com.
