Political Giants We Lost In 2023

I used to write a year-end column about valuable political or public servants we lost during the year. Looking back, they were almost all men. This year, let's celebrate three women who made an extraordinary mark on American life; they passed away this year, all in their nineties.

Rosalynn Carter

Rosalynn Carter was a high-achieving-with-little-recognition First Lady.

She was an important figure in the Jimmy Carter administration, sitting in on Cabinet sessions and meeting with foreign leaders. Aides used to say she was the only one who could get to her often stubborn husband when he dug in his heels. She was deeply involved in his greatest success, the Camp David Accords, which ushered in a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. 

She was a passionate advocate for mental health for over half a century. Stat News, a leading health newsletter, wrote that she was “the First Lady of mental health reform,” taking bold stances decades ago to mitigate the stigma.

Her other great passion after she left Washington was caregiving, establishing the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregiving, inspired by taking care of her parents as a young girl. There are as many as 50 million caregivers in this country tending to their parents, the elderly, the sick, the infirm, children, and others with disabilities. They are grossly underpaid — average compensation, if they get any, is less than $30,000 a year, less than garage attendants make. Do we really want to be a society that cares more for our cars than those unable to care for themselves?

Rosalynn Carter was their champion.

“There are only four kinds of people in the world,” she would say. “Those who have been caregivers, those who are currently caregivers, those who will be caregivers and those who will need caregivers.”

It was captured at Ms. Carter's inspiring tribute service by broadcaster Judy Woodruff (my wife and whom I've never before cited in a column), who noted that Carter worked so hard “championing the rights of the underserved, coming to the aid of the most vulnerable, doing whatever she could to improve the lives of others,” so she never would regret that she hadn't done everything in her power to do.

Sandra Day O’Connor

The first woman on the Supreme Court, where for 25 years, she was a force — often the swing vote — and a role model. “She was strong, rational and didn't have any dogma,” says Marci Hamilton, an O'Connor clerk who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. “I learned from her about professionalism, learned how to get along with people you disagree with, and that you don't have to be a man to succeed.”

When O’Connor was nominated by President Reagan, some religious-right leaders like Jerry Falwell complained. Sen. Barry Goldwater suggested kicking Falwell where the sun don't shine. If only we had conservatives like Goldwater today. 

O'Connor had been active in politics and served in the Arizona legislature, so she knew how politics really worked. None of the other justices had that real-world experience. Knowing how political money can corrupt, she was the key vote in upholding the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform. (One of her few regrets, she said, was doubt about the Bush v Gore decision that stopped a Florida presidential recount and gave the presidency to George W. Bush.)

It's only recently that the Court has been without anyone with political experience. In the landmark 1954 decision striking down segregation in public schools, a majority of members had held public office, including Chief Justice Earl Warren, former governor of California.

Today's Court is an elitist one, predominately Harvard and Yale Law School graduates who served on an appeals court as a stepping stone.

The late Walter F. Dellinger, a former Democratic solicitor general and brilliant observer of the High Court, wrote about O’Connor’s background: probably “the first intermediate state court judge ever elevated to the Supreme Court,” who “took her children in strollers to campaign for Republicans” and then was majority leader of the state senate. “These experiences gave her a pragmatic perspective and unique legal skills making her an outstanding” justice.

Dianne Feinstein

Few burst onto the national scene like Dianne Feinstein, who was just a few feet away in 1978 when San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated. With a calm presence, she took over a distraught city.

“Her entry into major office was indelibly tattooed on everyone in California; she kept the city together,” recalls Bill Carrick, who went on to run her six successful Senate campaigns.

Politically, Feinstein — as much as anyone in her party — helped turn a swing state into a solidly blue bastion, and then she made her mark nationally.

In 2008, after Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's long and intense presidential primary campaign, the two rivals met to focus on the general election at Feinstein's Washington home. She gave them a bottle of wine and left them alone for a couple hours. It worked well: Clinton became Obama's Secretary of State.

Feinstein was criticized, justifiably sometimes, for being too cozy with Republicans like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). A strong supporter of Israel, she blasted Benjamin Netanyahu when he used a joint session of Congress to try to undercut Obama's nuclear dear deal with Iran. One of her foremost achievements was a 1994 bipartisan enactment of an assault weapons ban for ten years.

I think Feinstein’s high point was forcing, after years of battle, public disclosure of some of the Central Intelligence Agency's brutal torture tactics after 9/11, some of which probably were illegal. Feinstein was a member of the foreign policy-intelligence establishment in Washington, which made her persistence — she was cajoled and then bullied by the agency — all the more remarkable.

“That was Diane,” says Carrick: “Patient, persistent, with extraordinary commitment and courage.”

Al Hunt is the former Washington executive editor of Bloomberg News. He previously served as reporter, bureau chief and Washington editor for The Wall Street Journal. He co-hosts the "Politics War Room" with James Carville. Follow him on Twitter @AlHuntDC