It Really Happened: Jesse Helms

Washington, DC

I was dining at Morton's in the '90s with my friend John Culver, the wonderful former Senator from Iowa. John taught me a great deal about his political hero, Henry Wallace. In fact, he wrote an interesting biography of the seemingly long-forgotten liberal icon, American Dreamer: A Life of Henry A. Wallace.

John noticed a colleague and motioned him to our table, whereupon then-Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) appeared. The ultraconservative firebrand greeted John like a dear friend, portraying a civility across political perspectives that has vanished in the Bush Era. John asked Senator Helms to join us for a drink.

I'm a slightly left-leaning political centrist, so the politics of Henry Wallace or even John Culver are too liberal for me. However, I found Helms' politics to be loathsome. He never flinched in derailing and ultimately voting against, for example, support for mental health reform. He was wrong to oppose these measures in the '70s, '80s and '90s. However, Senator Joe Biden told Tom Ashbrook last week that many years ago Helms and his wife adopted a severely mentally ill girl confined to a wheelchair. My opinion of Helms changes little, but Senator Biden's story certainly reinforces the need to be open-minded about people who are otherwise too easy to caricature.