Cheyenne Democrats host Gary Hart

Gary Hart was my senator during most of the time (1978-1991) I lived in Colorado. He ran for president in 1984, when I was 33 and working in the corporate vineyards in Denver, and again in 1988. That campaign ended badly, with some "Monkey Business," if you catch my drift. But during Hart's first run, he won all the primaries in the West – and a few others. He was the hot candidate. I can only look back and wonder what might have been.

But maybe Hart was fated to be a statesman rather than president. You can be both, but examples are rare. JFK might qualify, but I was just coming of age when he was president and his assassination made him more legend than politician. Nixon was statesmanlike when he traveled to China, but his Vietnam policy was buffoonery. Reagan had moments as a statesman, as did Jimmy Carter as president. But face it – Carter’s greatest moments have come on the global stage as a private citizen-statesman.

Gary Hart the statesman spoke in Cheyenne Thursday night. He and his wife of 48 years, Lee, drove up from Denver for a fund-raiser and mixer for Laramie County Democrats, followed by a town hall meeting. He opened his remarks on a light-hearted note. He and former U.S. Senator from Wyoming Al Simpson were both fairly new to their positions when they took a 1977 trip to inspect the Three-Mile Island nuclear plant. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission had raised concerns about a recent incident at the plant. As Hart, Simpson, and several others flew in a helicopter over the plant, they didn’t know they were being exposed to escaping radiation. Only after they inspected the plant and returned to D.C. did they find out they could have been at ground zero for a core meltdown if plant technicians hadn’t shut it down. Hart said that whenever he and "Big Al" share a podium, the lanky (and bald) Wyoming senator brings up that 1977 trip and says, "Before this Hart fella took me to Three-Mile Island, I had hair."

That earned an appreciative laugh from Thursday’s audience. It also served as a segue into the focus of Hart’s talk – security in the 21st century. Our security depends on many things but foremost is a sound energy policy. Most of us think that the U.S. doesn’t have one, and the Bush administration has no interest in formulating one.

But Hart said that the Bushites do have an energy policy. He notes that we’ve fought two Gulf Wars thus far and will fight more in the future. That’s because the energy policy can be described this way: to import oil from insecure and dangerous places for our non-fuel-efficient vehicles and then, when this is threatened, send our sons and daughters overseas to fight for it.

That’s a paraphrase, but those of us who have paid close attention to the politics of the Iraq War know it’s true. We know that Wyoming’s Dick Cheney formulated this strategy when he met secretly with oil company execs earlier in the first Bush term. We know that Bush’s and Cheney’s veins run black with oil and that will never change.

Read more tomorrow about the Hart appearance