the mixed legacy of Jesse Helms

From the WSJ, an apparently thoughtful review of an apparently thoughtful book by William Link on Jesse Helms, Righteous Warrior...

By any measure, Jesse Helms, the former five-term U.S. senator from North Carolina (now 86 and retired), has been one of the most momentous figures in modern American political history. He arguably saved the political career of Ronald Reagan, played a lead role in bringing the organizational muscle of evangelical Christians into the Republican coalition, leveled justified and withering criticism at the United Nations and its corrupt ways, and unstintingly laid down an anticommunist marker in Central America in the 1980s. His efforts made the world a better place.

But there can be no doubt that Mr. Helms, with his blunt, angry rhetoric and frequent reactionary rigidity, encouraged the growth of a slash-and-burn style in American politics. Worse, he gave voice, early in his career, to bigotry against black Americans and, later, against homosexuals. His words poisoned otherwise defensible arguments about public policy.

The mixed legacy may explain why conservatives these days so seldom adduce Helms as a hero of their party, allowing the positive aspects of his legacy to go unheralded. Now along comes William A. Link, a self-proclaimed political liberal, to fill the silence. As he writes: "Perhaps because of the tendency to view Helms in ideological terms, he has been widely underestimated, misunderstood, and even ignored by journalists and historians."

"Righteous Warrior" is an admirably thorough and fair treatment of a controversial figure, though a bit dry and soulless given the drama that Jesse Helms brought to political life. Mr. Link acknowledges Mr. Helms's estimable qualities right away. His opening paragraph notes a 1998 survey of 1,200 congressional staffers that rated Mr. Helms among the "nicest" members of the U.S. Senate. Mr. Link spends the next several pages cataloging Mr. Helms's manifold personal kindnesses, his responsiveness to constituents, his strong work ethic and other virtues. Immediately we see a man of charm and substance, and we understand how a North Carolina voting public could continue to elect him despite the national media's eagerness to demonize him....

But he also exploited race and sexuality in malevolent ways, as Mr. Link perhaps too enthusiastically chronicles with multiple and lengthy examples. Mr. Helms himself, ever courteous in person to all people, never quite understood why black voters appeared to dislike him, and he honestly did not consider himself a racist....Conservatives who deny Mr. Helms's clay feet on race, and who therefore refuse to understand why the conservative movement has been tarred with guilt by association with one of its most high-profile leaders, will never make headway against the deeply ingrained suspicions of black voters who might otherwise give conservative positions a fair hearing....

Critics will find in "Righteous Warrior" plenty of evidence that Mr. Helms was a champion obstructionist, a holder of grudges and even a sharp-tongued demagogue. (One man's "demagoguery" might be another man's well-aimed humor, though, as when Mr. Helms on the Senate floor once said he was unable to match Ted Kennedy in "decibels or Jezebels, or anything else, apparently.") For other readers, Mr. Helms's flaws will be more than balanced by the humanity of the senator who wept at Bono's descriptions of AIDS-stricken children and who was described even by liberal Democratic colleague Joe Biden as "one of the most thoughtful, considerate and gracious senators I have ever served with."

Conservatives can also take solace that, on matters where Jesse Helms was in the wrong, he almost always, in the long run, failed. But where he did achieve lasting success, he was usually not just on the right but in the right, to the benefit of his country.