Orrin G. Hatch, R.I.P.

His was a long life highlighted by distinguished service to the state and nation that he loved.

T his weekend brought the sad news that former senator Orrin G. Hatch passed away in Salt Lake City at age 88. Elected in 1976, Hatch served through 2018. The Utah Republican’s seven terms eventually elevated him to president pro tempore of the Senate, a post reserved for the most senior member of that chamber’s majority party. This put Hatch three heartbeats away from the presidency.

Hatch’s least momentous achievement might have been that he was among the first major conservative figures to believe in me. From freshman through junior years at Georgetown University, I interned for Senator Hatch. After class on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons between fall 1982 and spring 1985, I took a bus to Dupont Circle and then the Metro to Union Station, alighting and then hiking the short climb up Capitol Hill to our space in the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

I worked for the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, which Hatch chaired. This panel was, more or less, the GOP Senate’s bomb factory. The tamest issue with which we dealt was the Balanced Budget Amendment. From there, we addressed the then-still twitching Equal Rights Amendment, civil rights, gun control, school prayer, abortion, and more. I was proud to have helped Hatch organize, to our knowledge, the first-ever hearing on making English America’s official language. We also prepared Hatch for his hearings and votes on numerous judicial nominees.

Hatch and his staffers gave me genuine responsibility, from drafting constituent letters on major controversies to writing hearing questions and floor speeches for the senator on these and other vital matters. I also was asked to help develop as strong a case as possible against D.C. statehood, a topic that we laid to rest around 1984 — only to see it stir in its grave today.

I vividly recall a rather surreal legislative experience in which Hatch starred:

Republicans threatened to filibuster some proposal that Democrats were hatching — no pun intended. The senator’s plan was to walk onto the floor of the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body with a stack of amendments that he planned to introduce, which would bring the Senate to a halt and foil whatever the Democrats had in mind.

So our office went to work. We typed up one sheet of paper after another with simple language, along these lines:

Amendment No. 1. Nothing in this legislation will be construed to affect the rights of nurses.

Amendment No. 2. Nothing in this legislation will be construed to affect the rights of teachers.

Amendment No. 3. Nothing in this legislation will be construed to affect the rights of doctors.

Amendment No. 4. Nothing in this legislation will be construed to affect the rights of firefighters.

And so on, for several hundred pages.

Hatch stepped onto the Senate floor and offered to introduce, debate, and demand a vote on each of these amendments, which would have taken weeks to consider. Alternatively, the Democrats could put their measure back in a drawer and move on to something else.

The Democrats decided to do things the easy way, and that week’s potential attack on American liberty and prosperity evaporated.

Hatch surrounded himself with the most amiable people. My bosses treated me with warmth, respect, and good humor. Steve Markman went on to a seat on the Michigan Supreme Court. Randall Ray Rader became a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The rest of the mainly Mormon staff was as friendly as members of that faith tend to be.

Hatch rose from humble roots in Pennsylvania. He resettled to Utah after studying at Brigham Young University. In 1976, he made his first bid for public office and defeated three-term Democrat Frank Moss.

For the next 42 years, Hatch distinguished himself as one of the leaders in the effort to seat Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court — one of his toughest battles whose salutary effect continues to this day. Some 750 bills that bear his name as sponsor or co-sponsor became law. These include the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act (which launched today’s generic-drug industry), and even some measures that represent more of Hatch’s spirit of bipartisanship than the full-throated conservatism with which “Roarin’ Orrin” arrived in Washington. The latter include the Americans with Disabilities Act and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Either way, he always wanted government to live within its means, earning Hatch this term of endearment from President Reagan: “Mr. Balanced Budget.”

Hatch was a busy man in constant motion, from the Judiciary Committee, to conference-committee meetings (back in the old days when House and Senate members met to reconcile competing versions of related bills), and remarks and votes on the Senate floor. Amid this endless flurry of activity, Hatch always struck me as cheerful, humble, and welcoming.

Lucky me, to have had such a positive experience in government at such a tender age.

I last saw Senator Hatch in March 2015, when I appeared as a witness before the Senate Finance Committee, which he then chaired. We both had a good laugh that his once-intern was now testifying and offering him and his colleagues advice on how economic growth, rather than redistribution, is the best answer to economic inequality, assuming that is the right question to ask — a highly debatable proposition.

Thirty years after I last worked for him, Hatch and I both had grown older, grayer, and — perhaps — wiser.

His was a long life highlighted by distinguished service to the state and nation that he loved.

Orrin G. Hatch, requiescat in pace.