The Old Carolinians
If you stick around Capitol
Hill long enough, anything can happen. And during the past few weeks, it did.
Sens. Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms--the villainous, superannuated
Carolinians--became Statesmen.
Last
month, the 94-year-old Thurmond was feted for breaking the Senate longevity
record (41 years and 10 months, if you're counting). There was an outpouring of
bipartisan piffle, the gist of which was that Thurmond is an American miracle,
a South Carolinian hero, a model for politicians everywhere. His career was
much applauded. He won an election 18 years before Bill Clinton was born! He
challenged Truman for the presidency! Why, he's old enough to be Bob Dole's
father!
Jesse Helms, too, is now flirting with respectability. As
chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he's become the object of
much veneration. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who dutifully traveled
to North Carolina to kiss his ring, waxes fondly about her new friend Jesse.
Republicans and Democrats commend Helms for his good sense, flexibility,
and bipartisanship (?!). When he struck a deal last week to repay some but not
all of the United States' U.N. debts, senators on both sides hailed his
compromise. Even his latest act of spite, the attempt to derail William Weld's
nomination as ambassador to Mexico, is being interpreted charitably by
conservative pundits as a sign of Helms' commitment to a tough anti-drug
policy.
The
rehabilitation of Strom and Jesse is Washington politesse of the worst sort, a
twisted Inside-the-Beltway version of ancestor worship. Call it the Grand Old
Man Theory: Anyone who's served as long as Strom or Jesse has can't be all bad.
Here's a reminder: Thurmond and Helms are all bad. They have done as
much to despoil American politics as any two men living, and they're an
embarrassment to the Senate.
In 50 years of public office, Thurmond has
compiled a perfect record: He has done nothing that can be called an
achievement. His career is an unblemished half century of efforts to impede
progress, inflame race relations, and squelch good government. So what has he
done? Thurmond ran for president in 1948 on what is politely called a "states'
rights" platform or accurately called a "segregationist" platform. He conducted
the longest filibuster in Senate history in a vain attempt to stop a
civil-rights bill (one of many civil-rights laws he opposed). He
concocted Richard Nixon's 1968 "Southern Strategy"--the tacit appeal to white
racism that became the blueprint for future Republican presidential candidates.
(Thurmond, incidentally, was mentor to Lee Atwater, the nastiest political
strategist in recent memory. Atwater had to die to get rehabilitated. Thurmond
just had to get very old.)
Thurmond's apologists insist that he has mellowed. And he has, sort of. He
abandoned segregationism when South Carolina's blacks became a powerful voting
bloc, throwing his support behind the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, hiring
black staffers, and recommending a black man for appointment as a federal
judge. But his racial politics can scarcely be described as up-to-date. A few
years ago, I interviewed him about a black ex-staffer who had won fame as a
talk-show host. Thurmond told me that the staffer's success showed what "those
people" could do. This is considered great progress--when a politician advances
from Neanderthal man to the Stone Age.
As a legislator, Thurmond has been a zero. He doesn't have
a significant bill to his name. He does, however, have other things to his
name, such as the Strom Thurmond High School, Strom Thurmond Student Center,
Strom Thurmond Federal Building, Strom Thurmond Auditorium, Strom Thurmond
Educational Center, Strom Thurmond Dam, Strom Thurmond Lake, Strom Thurmond
Highway, Strom Thurmond Soldier Service Center, etc. In short, Thurmond spent
the first three-quarters of his political life as an ardent segregationist and
pork-barreler, and the last quarter merely as a pork-barreler. Is that a record
to honor?
There's
even less to admire about Helms. As a campaigner, Helms has contributed as much
as any senator to the corruption of the election process. He pioneered the
(ab)use of direct mail, sending inflammatory fund-raising letters to millions
of conservatives. He's notorious for massive campaign spending: He set a record
in 1984 by spending $17 million to win re-election. Helms has perfected the
stealth campaign: He relies almost exclusively on television ads, eschewing
rallies, public appearances, press conferences, debates, and the other niceties
of traditional politics. (In his 1990 campaign, for example, he would respond
only to faxed questions.) He has been equally destructive as a legislator: A
fervent anti-Communist, he championed right-wing despots across Latin America
(including death-squad leaders). He was also the chief U.S. defender of South
Africa's apartheid regime. And his anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-NEA rhetoric
has lowered standards for political civility.
These days, Helms' allies are trying to present
him as a moderate, accommodating figure, but that image won't stick. Helms is
an absolutist, and he doesn't stop till he gets his way. He only knows the
politics of the truncheon, a quality that's tolerable in a backbencher but
terrifying in a leader. Helms can barely stomach the democratic process. Last
year, for example, he held up 30 ambassadorial nominations to force the
administration to consider his State Department reform package. This spring, he
attempted to prevent the Senate from voting on the Chemical Weapons Convention.
And rather than persuade colleagues that Weld doesn't deserve to be ambassador,
Helms is trying to spike the nomination by not scheduling a confirmation
hearing.
So why are Helms and
Thurmond getting a free pass? Thurmond is so old that it's considered bad form
to criticize his sorry record or dredge up his racist past. (Or to comment on
his current incompetence--it's an open secret on the Hill that Thurmond has
lost it. His staff shepherds him from meeting to meeting, writes his public
statements, and cleans up after his many gaffes, such as his attempted pass at
Sen. Patty Murray.) Helms benefits from a more curious phenomenon: the vagary
of the news cycle. He's been mean-spirited and vicious for so long that editors
and reporters are tired of hearing about it. They need a new story about him.
So, voilà !--Jesse Helms has matured into a diplomat.
Thurmond and Helms each won
re-election in 1996, but this is likely to be the last term for both. Thurmond
announced a few weeks ago that he won't run again. Helms, who will be 81 when
his fifth term ends, is increasingly frail. He too may retire. January
2003--that's when we should celebrate Thurmond and Helms, because that's when
the Senate will finally be rid of both of them.
