Goldschmidt, Goldschmidt, Goldschmidt

Aye, Neil, we knew you so well, or so we thought.

By now, we have been treated to a livid feast of the opinion and storm about Neil Goldschmidt's thirty-years-ago adult association with a 14-year old girl. It's gotten absurd. The end product I'm talking about is Governor Kulongoski's having to deny knowing about (who knew Oregon Democrats were that clubby? I never got that impression) and the ridiculous move to have his portrait removed from the Capitol building in Salem.

I have problems with that last one (the first one is just another dark joke in the danse macabre that Oregon politics has become over the last decade). I have a problem with deleting personages that were an actual part of history in America, even if they were unsavory sons-a-bitches. Take Richard Nixon, for example. No one high politician has done more damage in the last century of public service in this country, or has made collateral damage to public institutions possible...or, in some cases, necessary. But we don't delete him from the listings of American presidents, nor do we devalue the victories he did have...opening China, ending the Vietnam war.

Neil did good things while mayor of Portland, I'd say that Portland wouldn't look like it does today or even have the reputation it does had he not served. Niel's governorship yielded nothing memorable, unfortunately, and when he decided not to run for a second term, I remember feeling angry; he hadn't stayed long enough to do anything of substance and left far too soon.

But, for all that, he was still a governor of Oregon, good, bad, or indifferent. He will still have been governor, regardless of what he got away with since thirty years. "Unpersoning" people just seems wrong somehow.