Commentary: Cecil Andrus: A class act plays on

Commentary praising the work and thoughts of Cecil Andrus, founder of Sustainable Northwest.

In a perfect world, you'd follow Cecil Andrus and his German shorthair, Jake, up to one of those rocky ridgelines where the chukar hide, cursing the climb and that tough ol' bird (the chukar, not the former Idaho governor). "They're so tough to kill," Andrus says, "that when you get one, it's almost a feeling of revenge."

In a perfect world, you'd join Andrus on that World War II minesweeper he once contemplated buying to take out every fishnet and dam on the Columbia and Snake rivers, securing a salmon solution that doesn't keep the "gains flowing downstream, where most of the people live, and pains staying upstream."

In a perfect world, Andrus would still be leading this region by example. In the world at large, we'll have to settle for this evening with the man at the 2006 sustainable Northwest winter dinner.

At 74, Andrus has lost little of his energy, blunt eloquence or unapologetic passion for the Northwest. The four term governor and former Interior Department secretary under Jimmy Carter, he spends his time directing the Andrus Center for Public Policy at Boise State and counseling the Gallatin Group on environmental and land-use issues. He also has lent his name to a leadership award that, reflecting his style, honors the inclination to solve problems rather than exploit them.

Andrus governed Idaho from I97l through 1977, then after his stint in the Carter administration, returned to office in 1987 for two additional terms. A conservationist in a conservative state - so conservative that he needed five years to convince the Legislature that kindergarten wasn't a communist plot to remove impressionable 5-year-olds from hearth and home - Andrus was a tireless advocate for salmon recovery, job creation, the Alaska wilderness and coalition building.

He had a gift for campaigning and politics. In his 1998 book, "Cecil Andrus: Politics Western Style," he writes about the need to cultivate a "modest aspect of menace," invest your popularity in the issues that might end it and play the bad guy when such dramatics are required to forge peace between natural combatants.

What Andrus didn't grasp by instinct, he learned from such iconic senators as Frank Church, Mark Hatfield and Henry "Scoop" Jackson. "Why did the Northwest contribute people of such independence, foresight and contrariness?" Andrus wrote in 1998.

An equally compelling question would be when those contributions came to an end. Andrus argues that the "exodus of Northwest political giants began in 1968" when Bob Packwood took out Wayne Morse: "Packwood...seemed to set ground rules for the modem business of politics: Stand for only one thing, re-election...

"Fewer and fewer people go to work to solve problems. Frank Church was a solver. So was Henry Jackson... We need more people deserving of a place in Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol. I'm hard put to think of any incumbent senator or congressman from the Northwest who belongs there."

Andrus is unsparing in his political appraisals. "George W. is the most wild-eyed liberal spender and deficit creator in the history of the White House," he said Tuesday. "The path he's leading us down is an absolute disaster." And he is painfully silent about the quality of leadership he's seen in these parts of late.

In a perfect world, Cecil Andrus would still be governor, still reminding us we can do better, still bringing the mad dogs to the table to break bread or break heads.

In the world as it is, he's chasing chukar, hunting elk in Idaho's national forest, sneaking off to one of the greatest trout fishing holes in the state...and keeping perfectly quiet on its whereabouts.