Sen. Feinstein’s record was a mixed bag
As the remembrances pour in about the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, let's reflect on her record. Feinstein's reputation as a centrist offers points for people across the political spectrum to find both agreement and disagreement.
Feinstein's centrism often meant she simply wasn't as eager as some of her colleagues to jump on the latest progressive pipe dream.
Consider, for example, her 2019 interaction with a group of climate activists who put forward a group of children to pester Feinstein with appeals to support the Green New Deal because something must be done in the next “12 years” or the world will end. You know the talking points.
Feinstein wasn't buying it. “There's reasons why I can't [support it], `cause there's no way to pay for it,” she said. “I don't agree with what the resolution says. That's part of it.” She continued, “That resolution will not pass the Senate, and you can take that back to whoever sent you here.”
While many politicians today are eager to pander to activists, Feinstein knew when it was necessary to draw the line and behave like an adult.
She also didn't sugarcoat or obfuscate even when it was the easy thing to do. Unlike many supporters of immigration reform, Feinstein was willing to acknowledge that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was on shaky legal ground. “It is. That's why we need to pass a law, and we should do it,” she told Chuck Todd in 2017.
Feinstein also understood the Senate as a place where elected officials should strive for compromise and behave themselves with collegiality.
In 2020, activists condemned Feinstein for daring to credit Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, for his handling of then-Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett's hearings. “This has been one of the best set of hearings that I've participated in,” Feinstein said. The far left never got over it, even though Feinstein ultimately opposed Barrett's confirmation.
Of course, Feinstein took plenty of stands this editorial board didn't care for.
Feinstein was a persistent advocate of bans on aesthetically dangerous-looking guns, despite little evidence such bans actually worked to reduce gun violence and the straightforward constitutional problem of depriving law-abiding citizens of their right to keep and bear arms.
Feinstein was also a long-time defender of mass surveillance efforts, even after publicly accusing the Central Intelligence Agency of spying on the Senate. “It's called protecting America,” she said, overestimating the effectiveness of mass surveillance and glossing over the civil liberties violations of such efforts.
Feinstein was also a longtime supporter of drug prohibition, which put her at odds with her state's leading role in ending marijuana prohibition. It was only in 2018 that Feinstein changed her mind, agreeing that federal agents have no business bothering people over marijuana in states where it's legal.
And on foreign policy, Feinstein was quite hawkish. She supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and helped block an effort by Sen. Rand Paul, RKentucky, to stop President Obama's military strikes on Libya. To her credit, she later expressed regret and opposition to the Iraq war and supported ending U.S. involvement in Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen.
“The best that can be said about her long career as a politician is that she pursued policies she honestly thought would work in the name of causes she genuinely cared about,” wrote Reason Magazine's Jacob Sullum. “But her good intentions produced positions that almost always seemed to err in favor of more government power and less individual freedom.”
Feinstein, like any person, was complicated. She got things right, she got things wrong. We appreciated her as a bulwark against far-left excesses.