THE EDITOR OF A MAGAZINE where I once worked had some half-serious advice for any writer working on a story about a politician. Don’t interview the pol, he said. You might like him (or her), and that would ruin the piece.
The prime example of this phenomenon was Jesse Helms, the five-term Republican senator from North Carolina who died last Friday. From a distance, especially through the lens of news coverage, Helms wasn’t someone with whom you’d want to spend your discretionary time. But when you actually met him, he was quite different, a likeable man, easy to talk to, enjoyable to interview, and always quotable.
I suspect he was more comfortable when responding to questions from a conservative like myself. He didn’t give many one-on-one interviews. When he did, interviewers often came away liking Helms, whatever their view of his political views. Juan Williams, then of the Washington Post, talked to Helms several times in 1990 and found him likeable and candid. Still, the article Williams wrote was critical, especially on the issue of race.
There were three things that were unique about Helms and that I admired. They made him stand out–and stand taller–in a field of mostly quite ordinary men and women who populate the U.S. Congress.
The first: He could shut out the buzz in Washington. The media chatter, the polls, the rumors, the talk of who’s up and who’s down, the constant chorus of criticism by columnists and commentators–Helms ignored all of it. This was empowering. It meant he didn’t worry about the small stuff that drags people down in Washington.
In my years of covering Washington, the only other person in national politics with this ability was President Reagan. Both Helms and Reagan could take bad news without panicking because, as best I could tell, they expected the future to be brighter.
Second, Helms was willing to take on social and cultural issues that other political figures shun–abortion, gay rights, obscene art, and racial preferences. Helms was unafraid of being treated as a political pariah in Washington society.
He was labeled a racist for his famous attack on racial preferences in a campaign commercial. But racial preferences are opposed by a solid majority of Americans. State referenda to ban them ban them pass overwhelmingly. Yet Helms was one of the few elected officials in Washington brave enough to object loudly, in public, about preferences.
Third, Helms had the courage of his convictions. This almost goes without saying. But Helms was a special case. When he was involved with an issue, pro or con, he was relentless. If he angered Republican colleagues, as he did in opposing a gas tax hike in the early 1980s, it was a price Helms was willing to pay. If he angered Democrats, that was a reward.
Helms, whose funeral is today in Raleigh, was one of a kind. He was a Southerner and a conservative, but he was not merely a Southern conservative. His interests were global, not regional. Helms left the Senate in 2002. Six years later, no one has come forward to fill the role he played in the Senate.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
