John McGowan,  July 7, 2008

Calling Jesse Helms “the polarizer” is exactly right. None of the obituaries I’ve seen have credited Helms with two of the inventions that have contributed greatly to the partisan brickbats thrown in Congress these days. The first was the trick of adding amendments on flag burning or funding for the National Endowment to the Arts to every bill that came before the Senate. Then you can run an election campaign ad that says “my opponent voted for flag burning 97 times. ”The second was the creation of a personal PAC. The Senator collects money from across the country through the mail-order route (in those days) and then doles it out to various congressional colleagues to help them in their campaigns, thus accumulating power through a new kind of patronage system. And, of course, also drives up the cost of Congressional elections as a by-product. That Helms could be a charming man I can attest through the stories told by many friends and colleagues here in North Carolina for whom he provided his signature exceptional service for constituents. But to insist, as Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has this week, that “Helms was no bigot” flies in the face of what the man stood and fought for in Congress over three decades. Just think of it this way: do you think anyone felt called upon to say, when Paul Wellstone died, that “he was no bigot?”