Declaration of belief

One hundred years after her birth and 47 years since her Declaration of Conscience, Margaret Chase Smith has come to represent the all that is good about political leaders. It is worth remembering today that her time in the Senate was not always easy.

The senator from Skowhegan, born Dec. 14, 1897, began her political career in what was very much a man’s world. After the death of her husband, Rep. Clyde H. Smith, in 1940, she successfully ran for his seat, and until 1973 was an unstoppable force at Maine’s pollng places. She proved that artificial barriers could not stand in the way of someone who was determined, and who backed up desire with preparation.

Sen. Smith was the embodiment of the ideal politician: warm, with a gentle manner as a campaigner, tough in spirit, shrewed in the arena. Her straightforward style continues to be emulated today. The public sent her to Washington to represent them, so she stayed there throughout the week. On the weekends, she came home to make a personal connection with the voters.

Sometimes she had strong incentive to leave Washington behind, even for a little while. In a 1954 book called “This I Believe,” which collected the thoughts of the famous, the senator from Maine seemed weary of the rough and tumble of politics. “Of course, like everyone else, I went into public service and politics with my eyes wide open,” she wrote. “I knew that any public official is fair game for slander and smear and carping criticism. In knew that ingratitude was to be expected. …

“I should have known that chances were good that I would even be accused of being a traitor to my country. These things I knew. But I never knew how vicious they could get and how deeply they could cut.

“It is these things I think when I’m tired and discouraged — and when I wonder if being senator is worth all that I put into it. These are times when I consider quitting public life and retreating to the comforts and luxury of private life.

“But these times have always been the very times when I became all the more convinced that all the sorrow, abuse, harassment and vilification was not too high a price or sacrifice to pay.

“For it is then that I ask myself, `What am I doing this for?’ I realize that I am doing it because I believe in certain things — things without which life wouldn’t mean much to me.

“This I do believe — that life has a real purpose; that God has assigned to each human being a role in life; that each of us has a purposeful task; that our individual roles are all different but that each of us has the same obligation to the best he can.”

It is easy to gloss over the hard times Sen. Smith faced in her role as national leader. But it was the day-to-day struggles — and her faith that those struggles could be overcome — that made her truly remarkable and an inspiration to so many people. While honoring the ideal by which we remember the senator, let’s not forget the difficult details of her career.