The phrase "compassionate conservative" has gone out of vogue in recent years, and so, in many circles, has the underlying concept.
Yet until his death last week at the age of 81, former Louisiana Gov. Dave Treen continued to embody the label.
As the first post-Reconstruction GOP member of Congress and governor, Treen holds a special place in the history of the Louisiana Republican Party. Still, what many people who fondly remembered him last week highlighted was not his conservatism, but his compassion.
In his later years, that compassion extended all the way to the federal Detention Center in Oakdale, where Treen's onetime nemesis, former Gov. Edwin Edwards, is doing time for gambling corruption.
During their brutal 1983 contest for governor, Edwards tagged his rival with an insult he could never shake, calling him so slow and ponderous that he took an hour and a half to watch "60 Minutes." Two decades later, there was Treen lobbying former President George W. Bush to commute Edwards' prison sentence.
According to U.S. District Court Judge Jay Zainey, a close friend of Treen's, it was a matter of faith and conviction. Treen said the Lord's Prayer each night, Zainey recalled, and felt that "if I'm not going to be a hypocrite, I have to live it, and forgive Edwin Edwards." His embrace of the demonstrably corrupt Edwards -- who last week said the two had become "very good friends" -- didn't play well among many Republicans and some others who shared Treen's reform-minded bent. But it was entirely in character.
Treen believed in second chances. In his later years, he became deeply involved in a group called Project Return, which helps people released from prison build productive lives.
And he believed in personal relationships, even when they crossed party lines.
In his attempt to return to Congress in 1999, Treen stressed the value of his longstanding friendships with onetime colleagues who, by then, had ascended to leadership posts.
He also collected endorsements from just about every elected official around, Republican and Democrat. It didn't hurt that most of the political class had no use for his lone wolf opponent, then state Rep. and now U.S. Sen. David Vitter, who won the race anyway.
Days before that election, Treen got the terrifying news that his college-age grandson Jason Neville had failed to return from a solo hiking trip in Oregon. Treen suspended the campaign to join his family on the vigil. The episode ended strangely but happily when a TV station helicopter covering the story found Neville alive and well. Those of us who were covering the campaign expected to see a young Republican walk out of the woods.
Wrong. Jason Neville would eventually reemerge as leader of the local Green Party.
Curious, I later asked each of them, separately, about the family dynamic. Both described a warm, close relationship built on a shared love of politics and animated but respectful debate. It was genuinely sweet and also in character.
Treen was a conservative, but he kept an open mind on individual issues and never made ideological differences personal. He may have been a throwback, but he was also a "class act" as Democratic former Gov. Kathleen Blanco put it.
In fact, it's striking that so many public figures and regular people described Treen using the same words: decent and dedicated, honest and honorable. It's also striking how many said they were privileged to know him not just as a politician, but as a person.
When people feel that way about you at the end of your life, you've done something very right.
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Stephanie Grace can be reached at sgrace@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3383.
