Source: New York Times
Contact: Sat, 2 Aug 1997
By RICHARD L. BERKE and STEVEN LEE MYERS
W ASHINGTON Sen. Jesse Helms' ability to block William Weld's
nomination to be ambassador to Mexico, singlehanded, is only the
latest example of a Washington axiom: Everyone is afraid of the
Republican from North Carolina.
President Clinton was so intent on not crossing Helms, White House
aides said, that he was careful to offer only a tepid endorsement
of Weld as an aside in a speech this week.
Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, the Republican leader who is not
generally timid about meddling with his committee chairmen, turned
aside private pleas from some other Republicans to challenge Helms
on this nomination.
Even Democratic colleagues have chosen not to go against Helms,
though he is as much a beacon of unsparing conservatism as Sen.
Edward Kennedy is of unsparing liberalism.
Helms, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, has a
decadeslong history of using the Senate rules as a legislative
roadblock to further his crusades against communism and to press
his conservative social agenda. His oftensuccessful efforts to
delay, in some cases halt, presidential nominations or to sabotage
legislation have earned him the sobriquet Senator No.
Asked in an interview Friday on how Helms commanded such power,
former Senate Republican leader Bob Dole said of the political
establishment: "They're afraid of him. Jesse runs a pretty tight
ship."
Though he has forged a strong relationship with Helms, Sen. Joseph
Biden of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations
Committee, was blunter. "He's prepared to be mean," Biden said. "He's
prepared to be disliked. He's prepared to be ostracized." But Helms'
leverage is rooted in more than his image as an intractable
extremist. Even as he refuses to budge on Weld, Helms is working
closely with the Clinton administration on a host of issues, most
notably efforts to pay off back dues to the United Nations and to
reorganize the State Department. Helms and Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright have become so close that they greet each other
with kisses. Two and a half years into Helms' tenure as chairman, his
relationship with Albright is producing substantive agreements on
foreign policy. The two are so chummy that administration officials
said they do not want to jeopardize that bond for the sake of Weld, a
moderate Republican who resigned as governor of Massachusetts this
week to devote himself to pressing for his confirmation. (Albright
has talked to Helms about the Weld nomination, her senior aides said,
but has not pressed him particularly hard.) Chatting in the lobby of
a Las Vegas hotel this week after Clinton resisted delivering a more
effusive endorsement of Weld, John Podesta, a deputy chief of staff
who is shepherding the nomination through the Senate, said, "We don't
need to add a new log on to the fire of antagonism." A Willingness To
Say 'Hell, No' The sources of Helms' power are his deeply held
convictions, his stubborn streak and his lack of concern about what
people say about him. And unlike many of his colleagues, Helms has no
hesitation to exercise his power, and to seize on every parliamentary
maneuver that exists to press his causes. Most senators, for
instance, would not dare use their authority to
refuse to schedule a hearing on a presidential nomination, as Helms
has done in the Weld case. And because Helms, 75, has been something
of an icon in the conservative movement since he was first elected in
1972, many Republicans are loath to take him on, for fear of
offending that segment of their party's voting base. "The Senate club
is not a place where you have a lot of guys who got there because
they were willing to say, 'Hell, no.' " said Richard S. Williamson, a
former aide to President Ronald Reagan who has known Helms since they
both worked together on the 1976 Republican Party platform. "The
nature of politics is to try to gather support and be collegial.
Someone who is willing to stand alone is always going to have
disproportionate influence." Helms' ironfisted control, and the end
of the cold war, have discouraged senators from serving on the
oncecoveted Foreign Relations Committee. Of Helms' 10 Republican
colleagues on the committee, seven are freshmen. His control also
reflects Helms' intense belief in preserving the traditions of the
Senate. Several authorities on Congress said former Sen. Howard
Metzenbaum, a liberal Democrat from Ohio, was the only other senator
in recent times who was willing to exert power to the maximum extent
possible, even at the expense of inconveniencing or thwarting
colleagues. "They all do it, but usually they do it less offensively
and with less callous disregard for the consequences," said Ross K.
Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University. "At the same
time, Helms is respected. He is not viewed as a Joe McCarthy, someone
who bring the Senate in disgrace. He has extremely firm convictions
and believes in using every parliamentary device at his disposal to
achieve his objectives." Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the
Democratic leader, praised
Helms, saying he "virtually cleared the calendar of ambassadorial
nominations." Yet he said that when Helms drags matters out like with
Weld, it bogs down the institution. "If every chairman would take
that kind of action," he said, "it would be impossible for us to
conduct the business of the Senate." Trying to halt the appointment
of ambassadors has been a Helms speciality. In 1987, for example,
Helms fought bitterly with the then committee chairman, Sen.
Claiborne Pell, DR.I., over a nomination for ambassador to Portugal.
Pell pressed for confirmation, arguing that it was important to "get
on with the nation's business." Helms replied, "Bull!" Helms lost the
fight, and dived into a speech as Pell tried to cut him off. "You
cannot take the floor away from me," Helms declared. "If you railroad
me, Mr. Chairman, you'll regret it." A HardLiner Finds Some Unlikely
Allies When Republicans regained control of the Senate after the 1994
elections, sweeping him into the chairmanship of the Committee on
Foreign Relations, Helms appeared determined to live up to his
reputation, developed by years in the minority, as an extremist, an
obstructionist, an isolationist. Even before the 104th Congress
convened, he declared Clinton unfit to be commander in chief and
suggested he "better have a bodyguard" if he decided to visit a
military base in North Carolina. Things did not improve. After
striking what he thought was a bargain with Warren Christopher, then
secretary of state, to reorganize the State Department, Helms was
infuriated when the White House backed off. So for months, Helms
halted all meetings of the committee, thereby stalling ratification
of a dozen treaties and freezing 400 promotions in the State
Department. He also refused to hold hearings for dozens of ambassador
nominations, prompting Christopher to complain that the impasse had
created "management and morale problems." Eventually, Helms yielded and
the committee resumed work.
Clinton, facing reelection last year, also showed a willingness to
compromise, and the turning point was probably when he signed Helms'
legislation to tighten the economic embargo of Cuba.
But the administration's designated charmer is the secretary of
state. Albright, who visited Helms in North Carolina while still
ambassador to the United Nations last year, spent aday with Helms
again this year, delivering a speech, planting a kiss on the
senator's cheek in his hometown and presenting him with a tshirt
that read, "Someone in the State Department Loves Me." She danced
with him at her 60th birthday party. And her softball team challenged
his (and lost, 8 to 4). Though Albright is a creature of the
Democratic Party, she and Helms seem to share a genuine affection.
Aides to both say it springs from his respect for her patriotism as a
refugee who found a home in the United States and from shared
anticommunist zeal. . In addition to Albright, Helms has developed a
respectful relationship with Stuart Eizenstat, the new undersecretary
of state for economic and business affairs. And he has also worked
well with Erskine Bowles, Clinton's chief of staff, whose father,
Hargrove Bowles, was a friend of Helms' since grade school in North
Carolina. These ties have produced results. After vowing to block a
vote on the chemical weapons treaty earlier this year, Helms relented
and allowed it to reach the Senate floor. He still voted against it,
and forced the administration to give assurances on how the treaty
would be enforced. The relationship with Albright also led to
agreement on legislation to reorganize the State Department and to
pay off the dues to the
United Nations, long a bete noire of conservatives. Just this week,
as the House and Senate met to hash out differences in the State
Department legislation, Helms held fast in a dispute over how many
Under Secretaries a reorganized State Department should have.
Insisting on the current level of five, Helms exclaimed, "The
question is, are we going to control the bureaucracy or aren't we?"
By the next morning, the senator from North Carolina had changed his
tone. He told his colleagues that he had spoken again by telephone
with Albright, who was in Asia. "She said she wasn't dressed yet,"
Helms said, noting that it was morning in Asia when they had spoken.
In an apparent reference to telephones that transmit people's faces,
he said, "I said I'm glad we don't have television." He then conceded
the fight to Albright, agreeing to allow her to have a sixth
undersecretary. "I want her to continue the good job she's doing,"
the senator explained. Policy Differences Are Just the Beginning Gov.
Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin, a Republican who is close to both Helms
and Weld, offered some advice for the two men to patch things up over
a bratwurst: "The two of them need to go out and have a beer," he
said. "It would be a little rocky at the beginning, but I think they
would get it done." Marc Thiessen, Helms' spokesman, brushed aside
the suggestion with a laugh. "Helms doesn't drink beer," he said.
Beer or no beer, Helms and Weld have never met, and that prospect
seems increasingly unlikely. In his only lengthy interview on the
subject, Helms said on Fox News earlier this summer, "I don't think
he is ambassador quality." Given the problems with drug trafficking
in Mexico, Helms has said he could not condone an ambassador to that
country who, like Weld, supports the use of marijuana for medicinal
purposes.
But he said there were other reasons as well for his opposition.
People close to Weld speculate that former Attorney General Edwin
Meese was pressing Helms to reject Weld. Weld was denounced by
conservatives when he resigned as head of the criminal division of
the Justice Department in 1988 to protest Meese's policies.
But in an interview, Meese denied that he had spoken to Helms. "I'm
staying completely away from anything to do with Weld," he said.
Helms' advisers noted that beyond the drug issue and Weld's
liberal positions on social matters such as abortion and homosexual
marriages there were plenty of other reasons Weld had not
endeared himself to the senator.
During a debate last October, in Weld's failed bid to unseat Sen.
John F. Kerry, the moderator asked the governor: "If you are
elected, will you vote in the Republican caucus to reconfirm Jesse
Helms as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee?"
Weld sidestepped the question, responding, "You know, you never
know whether incumbents are going to get reelected," adding that
he would have to "wait and see when I get down exactly what all
those votes I would cast would be."
Asked last week whether he regretted his response to that question,
Weld said, simply, "No."
Beyond slights and ideology, some of Helms' friends said the
senator dislikes Weld for the same reason he never was close to
President George Bush: he has a disdain for politicians who came
out of the Ivy League eastern establishment.
"This may seem overly cynical, but I told Jesse, 'You know what
this is about? He thinks you're tacky the tackiest of all,' "
said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union,
referring to Weld. "This guy is a rich patrician dilettante. And I
think he thinks it's beneath him to talk to Jesse Helms or the
other hoi polloi."
Helms' advisers said any hope that the senator would sit down with
Weld were dashed when the then governor publicly asserted that his
appointment was being held up because of "ideological extortion."
"Weld does not want to be ambassador to Mexico," Thiessen said.
"Weld is using his appointment as a tool to start an intraparty
battle for the soul of the Republican Party. And he's using Jesse
Helms as his foil. That's an abuse of the confirmation process
and an abuse of the U.S. Senate."
Dole said Helms could be difficult but not completely obstinate. "I
never had a time where if I went to Jesse personally and said,
'This is very important to me or the president,' where we couldn't
work it out," he said.
Echoing many others, Dole described Helms as a gentleman: "My
motherinlaw had her 96th birthday in May," he said. "Who calls
her up and wishes her a happy birthday? Jesse."
In late June, Dole said, he was in Boston and tried to meet with
Weld so he could offer to broker talks between him and Helms. But
Weld was in Hong Kong. Dole said he left a message for the
governor, but never heard from him.
"I wanted to give him a little free advice," he said. "I didn't
reach him and nobody called me back."