ne hundred and eleven days after he denounced the Republican Party as a roach-infested, unprincipled wreck with which he could no longer be associated, US Senator Bob Smith of New Hampshire came crawling back on hands and knees, begging for the influential committee chairmanship he coveted more than honor.
''We need to get out the fumigation equipment,'' Bob the Exterminator Man had cried the day he bolted the GOP to pursue his nutty presidential campaign in, first, the US Taxpayers Party, then the Reform Party. Smith was trying more parties than a Dartmouth sophomore on Homecoming Weekend.
When he left the GOP, the erratic-but-emphatic Granite State solon dumped all over it: The platform is ''a fraud''; the party stands for nothing; ''Maybe it's a party in the sense of wearing hats and blowing whistles, but it's not a party that means anything''; the party ''is more interested in winning elections than in supporting the principles of the platform''; and ''We need to clean out the pollsters and consultants and the spin doctors and the bloated staffs who tell us what to say, how to say it, when to say it, and how long to say it. The American people elected us. Isn't it time we started thinking for ourselves?''
Thinking for himself was what sent the senator over the rhetorical cliff that day. Thinking of himself was what brought him crawling back. What happened in the interim?
Several things. First, Smith's presidential ambitions - never more than a gleam in the eye of a high school teacher who'd lucked out to get as far as he did - crashed and burned on the rocks of indifference and ridicule in his home state. His reelection prospects two years hence are now problematic.
Second, the chairmanship of the influential Senate Environment and Public Works Committee became unexpectedly vacant with the death two weeks ago of Rhode Island's senior senator, John Chafee. Under the Senate's seniority rules, Smith, as a Republican, would have automatically moved up to the chair, but his tirade on the Senate floor angered many of his former GOP colleagues. They have had to put up with many speeches from the long-winded New Hampshirite, many of them blood-curdling lectures on abortion and the perfidy of women who don't want a baby.
Fond of charts, photos, a long schoolmaster's pointer, and his own voice, Senator Smith has no causes dearer to him than opposing abortion and gun control of any stripe. Unlike the gentlemanly Chafee, a Yankee highly prized in the chamber for his courtly and principled stands, Smith was opposed to many of the environmental safeguards Chafee championed. Smith is a polluter-protector, when it comes to determining who pays to clean up Superfund sites.
On the scorecard of the League of Conservation Voters, Chafee voted right 70 percent of the time, and Smith 36 percent. But the alternative to Smith, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, was even worse, with a pitiful 7 percent voting record in the eyes of the League. Inhofe is considered so far in the tank to Big Oil that his stature is measured with a dipstick.
The choice left environmentalists glum. The committee plays a huge role in cleaning up America's air and water. The Sierra Club's Dan Weiss told The New York Times, '' It wouldn't be surprising to see an environmental feeding frenzy launched by Mr. Smith, or especially Mr. Inhofe.''
While Chafee was an architect of environmental law, said Deb Callahan of the League, ''The next person is going to use more of a wrecking-ball approach.'' The wrecking ball will be named Smith, after Trent Lott, the majority leader, engineered the return of the prodigal to the fold.
And ''fold'' is what Smith did. Do you still stand by your criticisms, senator? ''Yes,'' replied the new chairman, all smiles, totally obtuse when it came to acknowledging the hypocrisy of his actions. One of the tenets of the US Senate, the Kra-Z-Glue that holds it together, more or less, is that one senator does not question the sincerity or motivation of a fellow, no matter how lunk-headed you find him or her to be.
Smith has bellowed mightily about his deep commitment to high moral principle. But after this pathetic turnabout, one has to ask: How deep? How high? When his supposedly principled departure from the GOP ended with such an abrupt and undignified reversal? Principle, my eye.
It was during the week of Chafee's funeral that Smith came weaseling back. Now, as a matter of custom, I normally cut a wavering pol some slack. But it takes more slack than you can pack onto a deep-sea reel to allow Senator Smith to shake the hook on this one. Let him rant about principle all he will, his flipping-and-flopping, posturing-and-pretending, his honeyed words about the demise of his dear departed colleague notwithstanding, his crude and self-serving lunge for the gavel brands him as a self-dealing pol of the lower orders.
A lot of states would not tolerate such crass conduct. We'll find out in 2002 if New Hampshire is among them. Honor is not rare in politics, despite this cheap spectacle, and it is usually not completely absent in even the most roguish pol. But where is the redeeming thread of honor in this poltroonish example? You could say this is New Hampshire's problem, but Smith's chairmanship puts this principle-bender in charge of the very air we breathe, the water we drink.
Will Senator Smith be a stand-up guy when it comes to taming the polluters? Or a willing co-conspirator? We've just seen that the Big Bobber can turn on a dime when there's something for Bob in it. Previously a back-bencher of little consequence, given to bloody harangues about pregnant women and their bleak choices, he's now thrust into a post of vast consequence.
Senator, which principles will you be upholding this week? You pretend to be an oak-hearted solon in the mold of Daniel Webster. Let us hope, as well. But off your recent record, when push comes to shove, yours is a heart of oaf.
David Nyhan is a Globe columnist.
