An interview with Jesse Helms

Yes to Senator No

JAY NORDLINGER
National Review Online
http://www.nationalreview.com/
September 12, 2005

They called him “Mr. Conservative,” after Barry Goldwater relinquished the title. They called him a lot of other names, too — one was “Senator No.” Today, he says, “I was tempted to send a thank-you note to the newspaper that first called me that. I enjoyed being known as ‘Senator No’ because it summed up my purpose in helping to stop a lot of bad government policies and proposed laws.”

That answer is pure Jesse Helms. He is talking by e-mail from his office in Raleigh. He retired from the Senate in 2003, after 30 years there.

And he has just written a memoir called Here’s Where I Stand. An early reviewer in Booklist — the journal of the American Library Association — said “Helms was the most reviled and despised U.S. senator.” Well, he was no doubt the Left’s bête noire, just as Ted Kennedy is the Right’s. (Although Hillary Clinton challenges him for that position.) Through the years, Helms was notably calm in the face of attacks. He quotes Harry Truman: “If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.” And he says, “Some of the biggest laughs I ever got were from political cartoons intended to ridicule me.”

While in the Senate, Helms was above all an anti-Communist, a Cold Warrior. Did he ever think he’d see the end of that war? “I surely hoped and prayed I would. After all, the Cold War was a comparatively recent aberration in the sweep of history and I was convinced that the desire to be free would be more powerful than the grip of Communism.” Helms credits Reagan’s “firmness,” and says, “Gorbachev could see which way the tree was falling and was smart enough to jump out of its way.” Needed in the West, says Helms, are “leaders who have the same kind of backbone their freedom-loving citizens have. Appeasement and negotiation have never worked in overcoming evil.”

So, what does he think of the current president? “I think George W. Bush is a principled man and has proven his determination to do what he thinks is best for the country without worrying about his popularity.” And what about the conflict in which we are currently engaged? Is it as tough a challenge as the Cold War? “The War on Terror is every bit as tough a challenge as the Cold War — probably more so, because those who oppose us are ideologues who are not interested in our defeat so much as our demise. But that does not mean this war is any the less winnable.” It will be won “if we do not give in to those who would try to appease the enemy.”

One charge that has long dogged Jesse Helms is racism — the contention that he is anti-black. And he says? “Of course I’m not anti-black, and any number of African-American friends and Capitol Hill staffers would be happy to set that record straight. I have always been opposed to violence from any quarter; to unconstitutional quotas; and to politicians who try to rob people of their ability to dream their own dreams and reach their own goals through their own efforts by selling them the lie that they can’t succeed without the government running their lives. I have always believed that the American Dream is the birthright of every American, and that the free-enterprise system is the route to secure that dream.”


In his 1990 reelection campaign, Helms ran a TV ad that showed a man crumpling a letter informing him that he had been denied a job — he had lost out because of race quotas. The ad caused a huge stir, widely deemed a racial low blow. Says Helms: “What a tempest in a teapot.” The ad “was about quotas, and my opponent’s support for a bill that was later ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. The outcry was just one more attempt to change the subject from the issues to race. I chose to run on the issues.”

And the American South today? Is it fully integrated with the rest of the country, or are there Civil War hangovers? “Let’s see,” says Helms. “The fastest-growing spectator sport in America is NASCAR. Country-music stars pack stadiums everywhere they perform. The last two presidents of the United States have been from Arkansas and Texas. Two of the biggest banks in the country are headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. I’d say the South has pretty well recovered from a dispute that took place almost 150 years ago. Of course, if Hollywood keeps serving up stereotypes of country bumpkins with bad accents, we may have to retaliate.”

In his long career, he must have met many interesting people. Who were the most interesting? “This question would require a second book!” Helms says. “Maybe it was my early training as a journalist, but I’ve found every person I ever met has some quality that makes him or her interesting and unique as a person. Sometimes you have to dig a little harder, but everyone has a story of interest.” And his favorite colleagues? Well, start with Reagan and Thatcher — but in the Senate, “I’d include Hubert Humphrey and Jim Allen and Joe Biden and Orrin Hatch and Pat Moynihan and so many others retired or currently serving, or sadly no longer with us.” (Jim Allen was Sen. James Browning Allen of Alabama, who died in 1978, while in his second term.)

And Helms’s not-so-favorite colleagues? They “provided challenges.” Some senators, like Paul Wellstone, arrived in Washington “determined to dislike me,” but wound up becoming personal friends. With others, such friendship was impossible: “but we could still respect the fact that we were there because the people of our home state elected us. We could respect their choice by our civility to one another.”

It was frequently said about Senator Helms that, a provincial, he never traveled the world — and how can you be chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee (as he was) without knowing the world?

Helms: “I’ve traveled extensively to Asia, Africa, South America, the Middle East, and Europe throughout my life and my Senate career. In 2001 I took the committee to Mexico for its first meeting on foreign soil. What I did not do is make these trips at government expense or to make a big publicity show, so it was assumed by people who didn’t bother about knowing the truth that I did not have firsthand knowledge of world issues.” Furthermore, “I had trusted staff members who served as my eyes and ears around the world and close friendships with world leaders and foreign nationals who made sure I had the best information available about the issues in their countries.” So, “far from being hampered, my approach to fact-gathering made sure I wasn’t getting the spin version of those issues,” spin being “too often a part of those well-known political junkets.”
He was a successful politician — he never lost an election. But, says Helms, “I did not enjoy the campaign trail, and I never considered myself an eloquent speaker or debater.” What he enjoyed was “setting out conservative ideas in a way folks could understand and appreciate.”

A boilerplate question: Your greatest achievement in the Senate? “This is not a question I can answer. History will handle it. I can tell you that my wife thinks that one of the most important changes we helped bring about was to make roll-call votes routine. When senators had a voting record that the voters back home could examine, they could no longer talk one way during the campaign and vote another way in Washington. Those voting records helped send a lot of liberals into early retirement.”

Speaking of Mrs. Helms, what about her? “Meeting and marrying Dorothy Coble was and to this day remains the best part of my life. She is my best friend and the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.” The Helmses were married in 1942; the senator was born in 1921. He says, “I grew up during the Great Depression. I needed three jobs to support myself in college. I had no inheritance beyond the example of faith, hard work, and honesty. But I lived in the United States of America, and my father — who served as both police chief and fire chief in a small southern town — lived long enough to see his youngest son sworn in as a United States senator.”

He was called “Senator No,” and almost always portrayed with a scowl. But his outlook is positively Reaganesque: “We have no limits if we partner our dreams with our willingness to work for them.”