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The only victories of consequence for the GOP were the re-election of Republican Denny Rehberg to our state's single seat in the House of Representatives and the passing of an amendment that defined marriage to be a contract made exclusively between a man and woman. Oh, and the re-election of President Bush.

Red, blue or purple--color-coding Montana's patterns of voting is just too simplistic, and Brian Schweitzer fits the non-conformist mold to a T. A prosperous farmer/rancher from the area of Whitefish in the tony Flathead Valley country, Mr. Schweitzer cultivates a well-spoken, gun-owning, dog-loving, native-ritual-doing, shot-of-whiskey-drinking true-west style somewhere between that of Jeanette Rankin (a famously antiwar liberal Republican elected to the U.S. Congress before women's suffrage was passed) and Mike Mansfield (the conservative Democrat senator and former ambassador to Japan whose voting record, taken as a whole, was more liberal than that of George McGovern).

After taking degrees in agro-science from Montana State and then Colorado State, Mr. Schweitzer shipped off to Saudi Arabia and Libya to work on agro-irrigation projects for almost a decade, learning functional Arabic in the process. His first stab at major public office came in 2000, when he made a surprisingly serious run from nowhere against the seemingly unassailable Sen. Conrad Burns, a man whose local ratings seem to go up with every gaffe reported in the D.C. press and who has, in the words of former Montana Congressman Pat Williams, "brought home more money to Montana than any other politician in state history."

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Adding fuel to the partisan fire is Mr. Schweitzer's request to recall some of the Montana National Guard and its water-bomb helicopters from Iraq in order to cope with the anticipated Summer-from-Hell fire season due to an eight-year drought in the state. This has been cast by the GOP as an expression of anti-war sentiment.

How all this sorts itself out over the short term is anybody's guess, but Mount St. Schweitzer is certainly stirring things up--from driving himself around the state with his pet dog, Jag, to flying the tribal flags of the seven Native American Indian reservations in Montana in rotation above the rotunda in the capital, a unique symbol of the governor's maverick streak.

That streak came to the fore at the annual state governors' meeting at the White House, where Mr. Schweitzer upbraided both President Bush and Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt. He likened the president to a bad cattle auctioneer and Mr. Leavitt to a cowpoke "riding for the brand." National Democrats swooned at the audacity of the freshman governor from the Mountain West. And some even started to whisper a number: 2008.

Tribal flags at the White House? There's always a first time.