Goodbye and Good Luck, Mike Hatch

By Christopher Truscott

It’s probably better that Mike Hatch is leaving the Attorney General’s Office. I was thrilled Lori Swanson arranged to keep him on and saddened that the experiment seems to have failed. It’s time for the new attorney general to stand on her own and move forward.

Nevertheless, Hatch deserves better than the treatment he got over the past week. Few have done as much as him for those who can’t take on the powerful by themselves.

In an era in which special interest groups run amok on both sides of the political aisle, we should applaud Hatch’s dedication to regular Minnesotans whose voice would otherwise have been drowned out over the past decade. We need more people in public life who share the same unflinching commitment to those who put them in office.

As Hatch leaves government, it’s time to stop the obnoxious piling on and thank him for his service to us. He deserves at least that much.

Good luck, sir.

Christopher Truscott can be reached at chris.truscott@gmail.com. As a reporter he admired Hatch as one of the few politicians willing to tell it like it is. There are way too many wimps in politics.