As our nation watched the bloody political cage match between the Republicans and Democrats last week, many of us were turned off by the partisan invective, snarky quips and just plain hate that played out on TV and social media platforms.

In the midst of it, I spotted a news story that gave me some hope. It was an item celebrating the life of a senator who spent a career in politics playing a grown-up.

Last week, the U.S. Navy announced that one of the destroyers being built by our friends at Bath Iron Works would be named the USS Richard G. Lugar.

The nation remembers Lugar as a political leader. I remember him as a good and decent man whose success was built by listening to others, doing his homework, and making up and speaking his mind.

Dick Lugar, an Indiana Republican, was not a household name in Maine. When he ran for president in 1996, he pulled just 3 percent of the vote in our GOP primary.

It was a campaign that was doomed from the start. As Lugar prepared to announce his candidacy, the assembled TV crews packed up their equipment and left. That was the day a domestic terrorist bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 169 and injuring 680. Lugar gave a great speech, but there was no national TV coverage.

When he became Indianapolis mayor, it was a time of turmoil as the nation was torn by opposition to the Vietnam war and racial unrest. As some pushed him to opt for a strict approach to protests, Lugar listened to some veteran cops, like Hank Wolf, and others who urged him to sit down and listen and act on their complaints.

Of course, Lugar and the city got a lot of help from Democratic presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy who gave one of the most tremendous political addresses of all time when he urged the community to respond to the assassination of Martin Luther King with calm resolve.

Lugar broke with longstanding GOP policy by embracing a host of federally funded social programs designed to help the underprivileged, despite the fact it was a block that tended to vote for the other side.

His major mayoral coup was to convince the Indiana General Assembly to combine the county and city governments into a unified government called UNIGOV. One reason it passed was by excluding independent township fire departments and school boards.

Of course, it was a political winner for him as the combined Republican suburbs were able to outvote the Democratic city dwellers for the next several decades.

Unlike many pols, Lugar, a Rhodes Scholar, always did his homework. I remember flying around the state with him. As other reporters urged the pilot to take a detour and fly the helicopter over a nudist camp, Lugar’s eyes were glued to a CQ (Congressional Quarterly) economic white paper. FYI: The pilot declined the request.

After two terms as mayor, Lugar ran for the Senate and was whipped by incumbent Birch Bayh. Two years later, Lugar soundly beat Democrat Vance Hartke (59% to 40%) in the first of his six winning senatorial elections.

Once again, he rose to the top of his Senate class by doing his homework. He became one of the senators the others relied upon for quiet advice, especially on foreign affairs. As the owner of a farm and as a senator from a farm state, he studied the major farm programs and suggested they could be improved with a little dose of free-market pricing. That triggered immediate blowback from the farm lobby who liked the old deal and just wanted more subsidies. He got the message.

In the Senate, he was known for his bipartisan approach to limit nuclear arms. One of his significant accomplishments was the bipartisan 1991 Nunn-Lugar bill.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world was worried about what might happen to the thousands and thousands of Russian nuclear weapons stashed around the world in places like Ukraine, that possessed the world’s third-largest arsenal of nukes. The world was worried the Russian nukes might end up in the hands of the bad guys.

As part of the deal, Ukraine agreed to give up its nukes in return for a Russian guarantee to respect its borders, including Crimea. That deal lasted for some 30 years until the Russians invaded Crimea.

Naming a Navy warship after Lugar is almost poetic justice.

After college, he joined the Navy and became an intelligence briefer for the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Arleigh Burke.

When completed, the USS Richard G. Lugar will join the class of warships named after his old boss, Admiral Arleigh Burke.

I know Dick Lugar would wish her Godspeed and pray she never has to sail in harm's way.