As the 2016 presidential election devolves into a vulgar shambles, and as the Republican Party tries to figure out whether it is going to implode or explode, it is a salutary time to remember the life and legacy of Pennsylvania Sen. H. John Heinz III, who died in a plane crash 25 years ago tomorrow.

By the early 1990s, Mr. Heinz was widely acknowledged as being poised for some kind of greatness. He had a history of landslide re-elections in electorally potent Pennsylvania, a charismatic presence and movie star good looks, enormous and available personal wealth as the sole heir of the Heinz food fortune, a beautiful wife and three young handsome sons, Kennedy hair without a hint of Kennedy baggage and unlimited ambition. In a heavily Democratic state he had been re-elected to a third Senate term in 1988 in a phenomenal 64 percent landslide. Many expected him to run for president in 1996.

John Heinz was a liberal Republican in the days when there actually were such people, including many national figures such as Sens. Mark Hatfield of Washington, John Danforth of Missouri, Jacob Javits of New York, John Chafee of Rhode Island, Charles Percy of Illinois, Charles “Mac” Mathias of Maryland and Bob Packwood of Oregon.

At a time when compromise was still considered an art and comity a virtue, these senators were central to the national conversation — quoted in editorials and op-eds and regulars on the Sunday TV shows. Through alliances with moderately conservative Republicans and assorted Democrats, the liberal Republicans were active participants in the legislative life of Capitol Hill.

When he died in 1991 at the age of 52, John Heinz was a major national player.

From his first days in Congress, he focused on the issues that would mark his entire career: the plight of the aging, particularly older women; the threat to the environment; and the challenges of foreign trade, particularly for industries and jobs in Pennsylvania.

For someone with wider political ambitions, such complicated and even esoteric legislative interests seemed counterintuitive. But he cared about them because they directly affected the lives of the people he represented. And, as it turned out, he was ahead of his time in trying to address them.

As one senator in a party that spent most of its time in the minority, his ability to pass legislation was limited. But he became a master of the arcana of Senate amendments, and his mark was no less significant for being somewhat indirect.

John Heinz mastered, as much as any one human can master, the intricacies of economic policy. His colleague and friend Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat representing New York,  said “he understood the finances of the Social Security System as no one I have known in [the Senate].” Mr. Heinz was an active member of the Greenspan Commission that crafted the now-legendary Social Security reform of 1983, which remains the gold standard for today’s would-be reformers. He was able to incorporate much of his Retirement Income Policy Act legislation into the Tax Reform Act of 1985.

Along with Sen. Tim Wirth, a Democrat from Colorado, he created Project 88, a groundbreaking and successful plan to make the businesses that would bear the brunt of environmental regulations part of the policy process. When President George H.W. Bush signed the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, he praised Project 88’s contribution: “The innovative use of market incentives in the bill represents the turning of a new page in our approach to environmental problems in this country.”

Teresa Heinz Kerry recalls that John Heinz was, above all, a passionate and joyful human being who was “a born teacher in his heart.” At the dedication of Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College in 2008, she told the students, “You would have had a lot of fun with him, and he would have loved being here and pestering you with questions.”

Renowned political guru David Garth once recalled that, “of all the guys I’ve ever handled, and I’ve handled plenty, he was the most impressive. I’ll tell you why. The big thing about him was that he grew in office. Most guys get there, especially with the way John got there with the money and the background, and they don’t really rise very much above where they came from. But John did. He grew in reality. By the time he finished, he was the most exciting guy in Pennsylvania.”

Whether the times, and the fates, were propitious for John Heinz to become the most exciting guy in America will never be known. But his memory and his legacy can still inspire and challenge us today.

Frank Gannon served as Sen. Heinz’s chief of staff from 1979 to 1981. He also worked for President Richard Nixon and is now a consultant with the Nixon Foundation on the renovation of the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, Calif.

First Published: April 3, 2016, 4:00 a.m.