Sands of Time Smooth Crags of Sen. Helms

WASHINGTON —  Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) sits in the front row of a lecture hall at the small North Carolina college he once attended, arms quietly folded, a look approaching rapture settling over his face.

The conservative Foreign Relations Committee chairman is watching his celebrity guest, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright--a Democrat, of all things--dazzle students invited to an informal question-and-answer session about the challenge of defending America’s interests in a dangerous world. He beams like a proud father when a faculty member whispers excitedly, “She’s just as great as you said she was.”

It is a side of Helms rarely seen.

Fast forward 90 days and 200 miles to Capitol Hill, where the more familiar, combative Helms is at work. Consulting no one, he arbitrarily slams the door on President Clinton’s choice for the sensitive job of ambassador to Mexico, William F. Weld, a socially liberal Republican and then-governor of Massachusetts.

“An exercise in futility,” snapped Helms, summing up Weld’s chances to win a hearing. Helms’ objection: Weld’s advocacy of marijuana use for medicinal purposes makes him an impractical choice to represent the United States in a country that is a funnel for huge volumes of drugs that reach U.S. cities.

(Few, apparently Helms included, knew that the United States’ only legal producer of marijuana cigarettes for medicinal purposes is the Research Triangle Institute, located only a few miles from Helms’ home in Raleigh.)

The two scenes frame the extremes of Jesse Helms, easily the most colorful, controversial member of the Senate--as well as one of its most powerful, unyielding and cantankerous conservative voices.

But even as echoes of the Weld affair continue to reverberate, there is other evidence that after a quarter-century of confrontation and lonely, sometimes bizarre, stands, the legendary 75-year-old senator may be mellowing.

The reason, say those who know him, is simple: In Helms’ twilight years, he wants to get things done. He wants a legacy.

Since the start of this legislative session, for example, he has shown a willingness to compromise on important issues where he had previously refused to budge.

Just a month ago, for example, he gave up a prolonged battle against the United Nations, signing off on a bill to commit the United States to pay $819 million in U.N. arrears in return for pledges from the world body to cut costs, reduce staff and lower the U.S. share of dues.

While some senators argued that the U.S. had no right to place conditions on payments that amount to a contractual obligation, the reforms demanded of the U.N. fall far short of the sweeping economies Helms initially demanded.

In the same legislation, Helms agreed to the first increase in the country’s foreign affairs budget in more than a decade in exchange for support for a State Department reorganization that would absorb two independent agencies--the U.S. Information Agency and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency--but leave relatively unscathed a third one, the Agency for International Development, which he also wanted to fold into the department.

The bill now awaits action by a House-Senate conference committee. It “does not accomplish everything I want, but I think it’s the best thing for the American people,” Helms said when the compromise was struck.

This was a far cry from the scene two years ago when, amid vehement protests from both parties, he shut down the committee’s business for months, holding up more than 20 ambassadorial appointments, because the Senate refused to vote on his U.N. reorganization plan.

Earlier this year, Helms reluctantly permitted the Chemical Weapons Convention, which he opposed, to pass out of committee and onto the Senate floor, where it was quickly ratified. And in recent weeks, his committee has worked to clear a backlog of ambassadorial and senior State Department appointments.

Several factors drive this burst of new activity. Those who work with Helms say his main goal is to reverse the pitiful fortunes of the committee he chairs.

“When he puts down his gavel, his legacy will be that he’s restored the Foreign Relations Committee to its proper place,” predicted his chief spokesman, Marc Thiessen.

Others believe that he also wants a more positive legacy, one that goes beyond bashing gays, union bosses and the United Nations, that comprises more than taking unbending stands that, however principled, in many cases have achieved little.

“I think he’s reached a point in his life where’s he’s begun to worry about how history will judge him,” speculated a longtime former political associate who declined to be identified. “He’s trying to be a respected Foreign Relations Committee chairman, but, on the other hand, he’s a politician who’s made a career of Weld-like fights and just can’t help himself.”

The arrival of Albright at the State Department and Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) as the committee’s ranking Democrat have also been crucial.

Albright’s personal tenacity, her flight from communism when her family fled Czechoslovakia, her no-nonsense style and uncomplicated patriotism all strike a chord with Helms, whose political career has been an anti-Communist crusade. Albright has also been carefully deferential, traveling to North Carolina, visiting his college and even presenting Helms with a T-shirt that says, “Someone in the State Department Loves Me.”

Asked earlier this week about the mysterious chemistry in her relationship with Helms, Albright replied coyly, “It has to remain mysterious.”

Yet the mystery isn’t hard to resolve. Albright has gotten some things she wanted--such as the Chemical Weapons Convention, the payment of U.N. arrears and the increase in foreign affairs spending--while Helms has finally fulfilled his wish to abolish two independent federal agencies and get his committee moving again. The role of Biden also has been pivotal. He reportedly struck an early, two-part deal with Helms. First, the two agreed to cooperate to revive the committee, and, second, Helms agreed to let the Chemical Weapons Convention, which was strongly supported by Biden, pass to the Senate floor in return for Biden’s cooperation in fulfilling Helms’ goal of reorganizing the State Department.

“Everyone denied the quid pro quo, but the commitments were made,” said a committee staffer. “Both want the committee to be relevant.”

Those who work with Helms claim Biden and Albright have merely figured out how to work with their boss and that Helms himself hasn’t changed at all.

“If you try to work with him, you’ll find a willing ally,” insisted Thiessen. “Those who talk about a new Jesse Helms are wrong. They’ve just never understood him.”

Whatever the personal chemistry, restoring the committee to its former prominence won’t be easy.

Once the Senate’s most prestigious and influential body, its lure sank so low that the 55 Republican senators elected last November had to struggle and cajole to find 10 members to fill the committee’s GOP seats.

While the decline is tied in part to the reduced post-Cold War interest in foreign affairs, the committee also suffered under the lackluster leadership of Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.), and then was gridlocked during much of Helms’ initial year as chairman.

Senate observers agree that he is like few other chairmen in the committee’s history--one who rarely travels abroad, appears to show little affinity for the world of diplomacy, opposes foreign aid, abhors embassy parties, is suspicious of the State Department and allergic to members of the Northeastern establishment (like Weld) often found among the country’s foreign policy elite.

He refuses to grant interviews to the leading newspapers covering foreign news, and he has no interest in appearing on the Sunday TV talk shows.

“Sunday,” explained Thiessen, “is for God and family.”

“He’s different,” said associate Senate historian Donald Ritche.

It has been two years since he last traveled overseas (to Yitzak Rabin’s funeral in Jerusalem), and, although poor health recently has hampered his mobility, records show that even early in his Senate career he averaged less than one foreign trip a year. (Aides say he doesn’t need to travel because so many leaders visit him in Washington.)

“He certainly has never thought of himself as an expert [on foreign affairs] or wanted to be labeled as one,” said University of Wisconsin political scientist Charles Jones.

But these same traits, analysts believe, also preclude the emergence of any grand Helms vision for America’s role in the post-Cold War period. His legacy as committee chairman will, they predict, fall well short of such giants as Arkansas Democrat J. William Fulbright, who used the committee chamber as a courtroom to judge America’s Vietnam involvement, or Michigan Republican Arthur Vandenberg, who helped shape the post-World War II order, promoted a bipartisan foreign policy and helped negotiate postwar treaties with Romania and Hungary.

Whatever Helms’ politics, many Americans were shocked that one senator could single-handedly derail an ambassadorial nominee who appeared to enjoy majority support.

Observers explain that while committee chairmen have lost some powers to congressional reforms, they remain extremely strong. Because of Helms’ status in the Senate hierarchy and because many senators viewed Weld’s personal counterattack on Helms as a blow to the Senate itself, few committee members seem eager to challenge his decision to block Weld’s confirmation.

Aside from an angry demand for a hearing from the committee’s No. 2 Republican, Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, and a letter supporting Weld signed by two New England senators, the Senate has been largely quiet on the issue. Last week, even as Lugar was retaliating by threatening to tie up tobacco legislation to put pressure on Helms, Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) suggested that Weld seek another job.

“Helms believes he’s on firm ground,” noted a Senate expert who declined to be named. “I suspect he’s carrying a tacit majority with him.”

If so, it’s an unusual position for a man better known for taking on lonely, often unpopular causes. After 25 years in the Senate, Helms is remembered more for what he has opposed--including federal assistance to the poor, the arts and AIDS research, as well as foreign aid--than for legislation he has fathered.

In the 1970s, he denounced civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. as an adulterer and launched an ultimately futile filibuster against legislation making King’s birthday a national holiday. He voted against the confirmation of Henry A. Kissinger as Richard Nixon’s secretary of State (too soft on communism) and Caspar W. Weinberger as Ronald Reagan’s secretary of Defense (too liberal).

“Rambo of the Geritol generation,” former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole once quipped of Helms.

“His world is a struggle between good and evil; there are no grays, so there’s no room for compromise,” said Helms’ biographer Ernest Furgursun.

Born in the small crossroads town of Monroe, southeast of Charlotte, Helms parlayed a 1960s job as a Rush Limbaugh-like radio and television commentator into political prominence and then rode a Republican landslide into the Senate in 1972.

He tends to be stiff and formal in unfamiliar settings, and his reelection campaigns have been short on personal appearances and long on TV spots and carefully targeted direct mail, sometimes heavy with vitriol and racial overtones.

His tough moral stands on issues like abortion, coupled with colorful liberal-bashing rhetoric (He has dismissed a group of avant-garde artists as “cockroaches” and a gay lifestyle as “filthy and disgusting”), have generated a loyal following in the state.

“He may be a redneck hero in North Carolina, but he’s no redneck himself,” said Rob Christensen, who has covered state politics for the Raleigh News and Observer for two decades.

When he entered Congress, Helms took a seat on the Agriculture Committee, a seemingly logical place for a senator from the country’s premier tobacco state.

According to Furgursun, it was Helms’ conviction that racial desegregation was a communist plot, hatched from abroad, that sparked his interest in developments beyond America’s frontiers.

Time has robbed him of segregation and the communist threat, while the prospect of a balanced federal budget has taken the edge off his crusade for fiscal conservatism.

But Helms has found new enemies--focusing on the few remaining communist regimes, fighting political rapprochement and most-favored-nation trading status for China, and working to isolate Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

While Helms’ political priorities--and his intensity--have frequently brought frustration, they have also generated respect.

Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs Stuart Eizenstat, who is charged with convincing friendly foreign governments to accept provisions of Helms-sponsored legislation that penalize companies for using confiscated U.S. assets in Cuba, praises Helms’ resolve.

“In a technical, TV, blow-dried political era, it’s important that some [politicians] have some bedrock principles they stand for,” Eizenstat said. “Jesse Helms is one of them.”

John Fox, Washington director of the Open Society Institute, which promotes democracy and free markets in Europe’s post-communist countries, says Helms “took a tough line” against repressive moves by Slovakia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar.

“He was one of the first to lay down the law with Slovakia, that if they kept beating up on their minorities, they weren’t going to get into NATO,” Fox recalled.

But as with any politician who has made a career of taking unbending positions, Helms’ legacy will almost certainly reside in the eyes of the beholder.

For those on the far political right, Helms has marched at the forefront of a conservative ascendancy that began with the end of the Vietnam War. He is a staunch anti-communist who held the line at the height of the Cold War when others called for detente. He is a leader who demanded fiscal austerity when the national debt soared. He stands for homespun values at a time of moral decline.

“Next to Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms is the most important conservative of the last 25 years,” said the conservative Weekly Standard.

From the left, however, Helms is portrayed as a political reactionary, hopelessly mired on the wrong side of history, who supported segregation in the United States and racist regimes abroad, an individual who opposed federal help for the nation’s poor, whose political campaigns appealed to the darker side of human nature and whose politics have amounted to little more than a series of personal or quirky ideological fights far from the grand issues of the time.

Is Helms a true believer or cynic?

“I think the answer is both,” said Furgursun. “He believes most of what he says, but he’s totally cynical in the way he practices it [his politics].”