Fred Smith is more important than Hunter Biden

OPINION:

Much attention in the last few days has been singularly focused on the latest twist in the soap opera that is Hunter Biden, and with good reason. His story has it all — sex, drugs, guns, cash, powerful people doing stupid things — and with his father issuing a precedent-setting pardon, it now has what feels like a Hallmark ending.

Despite all that and the strong temptation to follow the crowd, I want to take a moment and examine another life, one well lived and worthy of emulation. Fred Smith was neither famous nor infamous, but his life’s work almost certainly touched all Americans, and he made the nation a better place for all of us.

Fred was the founder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a group that thinks about how to make the world a better place — and citizens better able to exercise their freedom — by getting the federal government out of places and decisions in which it should not be involved.

Fred died just before Thanksgiving at his home in Maryland. His colleagues at CEI noted simply that he was a friend, a mentor and an inspiration. He was certainly all that, but more importantly, he was a happy warrior.

Many people in Washington — including his friends — disagreed with Fred about many things, and he spent a good chunk of his career on the (temporarily) losing end of various policy contests. The organization he founded was chronically short of funds; it was always six months away from insolvency. His opponents were always imposing, had more resources and enjoyed favorable media.

Yet he remained resolutely cheerful and confident in the rightness of his causes. I never saw him angry or despondent in 20 years of interacting with him. On the contrary, Fred always remained resolutely optimistic that even his most hardened adversaries would eventually be converted to his thinking about any particular issue.

Perhaps most importantly, he was a genuinely caring person. He was one of the few people who wanted to know how those he encountered were doing. He was intensely interested in other people and their projects. I was lucky enough to have run across Fred early in my career, and I cannot think of an interaction with him that did not end up with me feeling better about whatever the macaroni of my life was.

That joy in helping others, whether finding their way to the truth about a given policy or finding their way on the path of life, was at the very core of Fred. He was smart, witty (though never mean) and just fun. CEI, the organization he founded, has effected dozens of changes to federal policies and affected the trajectory of thousands more.

All of that — helping others, taking joy in the truth and working diligently for one’s beliefs — is infinitely more important than the soap opera of the day. Fred Smith understood and lived that, and it is why grateful citizens should celebrate his life and mourn his passing.

• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.