Dianne Feinstein was California’s last ambassador linking state to the U.S. | Opinion

The death of Dianne Feinstein isn’t just the end of a path-breaking life.

It’s the severing of a crucial link holding California and the United States together.

In her half-century in public office, Feinstein played many roles. But for the Golden State as a whole, her most important job was an unofficial one: She was California’s ambassador to the American government.

This job was challenging, and it became more so as California, always an exception, grew rapidly apart from the rest of the country.

Over Feinstein’s 30-year tenure in the Senate, the Golden State became a more progressive and democratic place, even as much of America turned inward, into conservative populism and right-wing nationalism. And as our state government grew more aggressive and embraced experimentation, the federal government became stagnant and dysfunctional.

In this era of accelerating polarization and side-taking, Feinstein was an outlier. She played for both sides.

She believed deeply in California, and its liberal values on LGBTQ issues, women’s rights, gun control and the environment. But she also believed deeply in the American system of government, and remained devoted to a Senate with rules that made it nearly impossible to enact those values into federal law.

In reconciling these different loyalties, she served as a human bridge between two shores moving away from each other. How did she manage that?

One answer was her legendary stubbornness. The other was brains. She embodied F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous observation: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

It helped that Feinstein was a wealthy woman who could throw a party. California’s unofficial embassy in Washington was her home — an ambassadorial $7 million estate that had once housed American University presidents. As a diplomat, she knew her job was to talk to opponents and enemies. So many of the guests were Republican pols whose existence turned the stomachs of her voters back in the Bay Area.

It was no accident that the Republican to whom she grew closest was Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, whose vote could swing the Senate. Is it any wonder that Feinstein organized the Maine senator’s engagement party, or gifted her a painting that hangs prominently in Collins’ office?

Feinstein also employed her diplomatic skills to keep the fractious Democratic coalition — which included California’s all-too-few allies — together. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton met at her home to reconcile after the 2008 primaries.

But it became harder to be a diplomat as Washington grew angrier and more conservative. The Bush years saw the undoing of her legacy — the assault weapons ban she had championed in 1994 expired in 2004. And the cruel Trump years made her bipartisan efforts to reform immigration and prevent the government from using torture seem daft. The U.S. government, which she loyally served, had become a monster, building concentration camps for migrant children.

Politically, her diplomatic embrace of Republicans came to seem dangerous. Collins approved the Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices that would then revoke women’s reproductive rights and block reasonable gun controls.

In 2018, the California Democratic Party, tired of Feinstein’s diplomacy, endorsed her combative opponent, Kevin de León. “California Democrats are hungry for new leadership that will fight for California values from the front lines, not equivocate on the sidelines,” De León declared.

Feinstein won the election anyway, but her political base collapsed. As she showed signs of age, former allies called for her resignation.

At her death, she was the most unpopular Democratic politician in California.

Feinstein’s ambassadorship failed, because California and the American government had moved too far apart. Today, we live in a new Cold War, between our state and our nation, that Feinstein tried to prevent.

We also live in an era of daily mass killings with assault weapons she couldn’t permanently ban. We live in a surveillance state that Feinstein sought to limit. We deport, without due process, immigrants Feinstein wanted to integrate into American life.

It’s telling that Feinstein’s replacement, chosen by our culture-warmongering governor, is a labor and political operative, and that the candidates running to fill her seat are three polarizing members of the House of Representatives.

These would-be Feinstein successors may praise her, but they won’t bother filling her shoes. No one wants to play Feinstein’s role anymore.

Rest in peace, dear Dianne, our last ambassador.

Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square .