Still At The Helm

[NATO AIR]

I want to read this and Trent Lott's book. Lott was a wheeler and dealer, and in looking at today's politics, its interesting to see how he did. Jesse Helms was a force of his own, a constant foe of anything that caught his ire. How he was able to shape the government being just a senator would be very interesting to learn. i'm also glad to see he, in retirement, still going strong and trying to do some good (working with churches on the AIDS crisis, for example).

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Protected/Articles/000/000/006/002pkriy.asp

North Carolina's beloved former senator continues to fight the good fight.
by Fred Barnes
09/05/2005, Volume 010, Issue 47
Raleigh, N.C.

JESSE HELMS doesn't miss Washington. After 30 years in the Senate, he retired in 2002. "I was just so glad to get home," he says. Helms and his wife Dot live in the brick house that used to belong to her father. It's minutes from the state capitol and close to his small office. It's been their Raleigh home for more than a half-century. Their daughter Jane and her family live next door. Helms drops by his office most days, watches C-SPAN occasionally, but keeps his political activity to a minimum. Looking back at his years in Washington, he says: "I hope I haven't made too many people mad."

He made many people mad. His dogged and unflinching devotion to conservatism infuriated liberal Democrats and a good many Republicans. Now he's the one who gets upset. Helms is disappointed that so few senators have rushed to defend the sanctity of traditional marriage. He hates the excessive spending passed by Congress. Having made the eradication of communism in Latin America one of his chief causes as a senator, Helms is troubled by the resurgence of the Marxist threat and America's soft response to it. "We'll never be free of our responsibility" there, he told me. Helms believes the best thing that could happen in the region is for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro to die. "I wish I didn't think that," he says. "But I'm convinced of it."

Helms, 83, and forced by a nerve disorder to use a walker, has commenced a final

fling as a public figure. His memoir, Here's Where I Stand, was published by Random House in August. He's not going on a book tour, nor is he doing radio interviews. Helms taped a single TV interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News. And he's granted a few interviews with print journalists he knew in Washington. All this will culminate with a banquet honoring Helms in Washington on September 20.

Since he left the Senate, Helms has done two things of note in North Carolina politics. Early in 2002, he endorsed Elizabeth Dole as his Senate replacement. He did so at the National Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. The effect was to cut off any conservative challenger to her in the Republican primary. She won easily. Last year, Helms backed Richard Burr, a U.S. House member, for the Senate seat vacated by John Edwards, who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination. Burr, too, didn't face a conservative Republican opponent. Helms aided Burr's late rally to defeat Democrat Erskine Bowles by introducing him at a gathering in Smithfield shortly before Election Day.

Now, Helms devotes time to answering written questions from historians and others. A biographer of British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, whom Helms befriended when she was a mere Tory backbencher, recently sent him ten questions. They included this one: "How pleased were you by Margaret Thatcher's reaction to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan?" As you might expect, Helms was very pleased. "It was important for the Soviets to understand that their invasion would not be ignored or tolerated," he wrote. "Lady Thatcher did what was right without looking around to see who else would stand with her. She displayed the principled leadership I had seen in her when we first met."
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