Oh, I do. When writing the strip he was a young man, and as the cliche goes, if you're not liberal when you're young you have no heart. He obviously had a head, as well, because he was an equal opportunity skewerer of pompousness, right or left. Basically I saw him as a libertarian at heart, and he just wasn't cynical enough to see the futility in that approach.
He quit cartooning a couple of years after a hang glider accident broke his back and nearly killed him. That's when he canned the daily and went to Sundays only. He did that for awhile and finally said "what for?" and went off to enjoy the money he'd made while he could still enjoy it. I gotta think that someone who could figure that much out has to have something on the ball. I was particularly fond of Opus (wasn't everyone) and Oliver:
Now, with a character like Oliver, he can't be all bad.