19-03-2025
Opinion: We lost a giant when we lost Al Simpson
News out of Cody, Wyoming, that retired Republican Sen. Al Simpson had died at age 93 left me feeling more than merely wistful. In Simpson, we lost a giant — a model of how our democracy is supposed to work. He was a senator's senator, a consummate legislator who defied the aisle, building bridges out of friendship and forging legislation in the crucible of compromise.
I grew up in Wyoming and came of age during Simpson's early years in the Senate. This was the era when Michael Jordan was dominating the NBA, and all of my friends wanted to 'Be like Mike.' They even had T-shirts to that effect. I was not like other late adolescents at that time in that I didn't care to be like Mike. I wanted to be like Al.
A brief meeting during my senior year in high school only confirmed my choice of role model. He was gracious, kind, intellectually present and downright hilarious. Years later, when my career took me back to Wyoming to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, where Simpson was chairman of the board, he went from role model to mentor to friend.
His loss brings back a flood of personal memories, most of which still make me laugh. But the senator was much more than a funnyman. He achieved in life what most politicians only gain by dying — the status of statesman.
And yet his death represents more than the passing of an individual leader; it is the passing of an era. The halcyon days of the modern Senate included the likes of Danforth, Hatch, Garn, Bumpers, Kassenbaum, Inouye, Kennedy, Bradley and Baker. But to me, Simpson stood out among them and towered above even these titans.
In the gentleman from Wyoming, we had humor, grace, warmth and a serious effort to legislate. He did not see the Senate as a springboard to the executive office. He didn't want to be president, or even vice president. And he certainly didn't want to be a cable TV host. He was a legislator; he knew how to make law — an activity that requires a specific skill set.
In retirement, when he wasn't teaching at the Harvard Kennedy School, he was working with his friend, Democrat Erskine Bowles, trying to get a bipartisan group to endorse deficit reduction measures through what he called 'shared sacrifice.' Simpson's worldview was still informed by friendship, compromise and a genuine sense of the greater public good — elements that today seem almost quaint.
His life in politics is a stark reminder of what we have lost. It is more than his good-natured approach, more than his compassion or his skill set. What made him special was his authenticity. Whatever else Al Simpson was, or was not, he was real. And because of that, sadly, we may never have another like him again. For as we survey our political landscape in search of statesmen of his stature, we seek, but in vain, for his equal.
Kurt Graham is the president of the Adams Presidential Center in Quincy, Massachusetts. He is the former director of the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum and the George W. Bush Presidential Library. The views expressed here are his own.
