I have the highest respect for Mark Hatfield. In 1985 I helped coach the Lake Oswego Mock Trial Team when they won the state championship. My son was a member of that hand picked team. In D.C., Senator Hatfield scheduled a private meeting with the team who were representing Oregon at the national finals. He was so impressed with our group that he cleared his schedule and canceled a luncheon. He spent two hours with us, then personally took our group over to eat as his guests in the Senate dining room. We rode over on the trolley that runs under Congress guided the Senator. Hatfield is a true gentleman and a very honorable man. He was also a great Senator who did not support Lyndon Johnson's Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (Google it. Johnson was a worse liar than Clinton).
I still recall the faces of those kids when we toured the Vietnam Memorial. I was looking up some of my best friends who died in Vietnam. One team member, a very talented young man, was so overwhelmed he had tears running down his face.
Clearly you are grateful and this event is one which is cherished in your mind. It is not my intent to diminish this.
Respectfully, however, anyone who pats himself on the back for all the liberalism with which he aligned himself and championed in this article, who teamed up with McGovern on anything, and abandoned Reagan in our post-1970's military and defense restoration, politically speaking remains nothing more than a RINO.