Recalling Dianne Feinstein as she was
Dianne Feinstein, the lioness of the United States Senate, was also the lioness of California politics.
It's easy to forget in these partisan days that Feinstein, who died Friday at 90, was an exemplar of practical, moderate, can-do politics.
The way the centrist Democrat worked across the aisle from San Francisco City Hall to Washington is a lost art. May it be regained in her honor.
And let us not forget here in the days after her death that these last months of her Senate career did not show the kind of Dianne Feinstein she will long be remembered as. Recently fallen ill, elderly, too infirm to really carry out her duties, she was unable to fully serve in her seat and yet somehow unable to step away from it as well. Such is human pride, and frailty.
But since the day in 1978 that she rose to national prominence when San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated by a former colleague and she had to step into the breach — cool, passionate but serious — Feinstein was a star. Though reviled by her city's many progressives, a group whose ranks she never joined, she performed the almost impossible task of bringing wild San Francisco together after the killings and creating what was for a time a very successful city. She was named the most effective mayor in the country in 1987 by City & State.
Elected to the Senate in 1992 after a failed bid for governor, she was reelected five times. She was the first woman to chair the Rules Committee and the Intelligence Committee, and chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee from 2009 to 2015 and was the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2017 to 2021. She became known as the kind of Democrat who could be both a champion of the environment and of a strong national defense. She maintained strong friendships with Republican senators such as John McCain and Lindsey Graham.
And, as she did so often, she brought honor on California when, as Intelligence chair in 2014 when the its report on CIA torture were released, Feinstein called the government's detention and interrogation program a “stain on our values and on our history”. May she rest in peace.