At 75, the senior senator from North Carolina doesn’t get many chances like this anymore. For the last two years he’s been chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in the unaccustomed role of insider. He’s agreed to be charmed by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. He’s cooperated with the Clinton administration on some key matters, relenting on paying U.N. dues and allowing the ban on chemical weapons to proceed. He has a cordial relationship with the ranking Democrat on foreign policy, Sen. Joe Biden. The two, says Helms, ““have agreed to disagree agreeably.’’ His aides are no longer drawn exclusively from conspiracy theorists on the right. ““He fired some of the crazies and has gotten some things done,’’ said GOP Sen. John McCain, no fan of the chairman’s.
But cooperation isn’t fun. Helms is a Manichaean; he sees the world in absolutes. He’s Martin Luther, not Martin Luther King. Helms’s hatreds used to be easily defined: in- tegration and communism. With the rise of civil rights and the fall of the wall, Helms has had to spread his contempt around: gays, feminists, supporters of affirmative action, abortion and bilingual education. Cultural targets make for potent politics, but the old man seems to miss the days of a single enemy.
Enter Weld, the dream nightmare. The former governor of Massachusetts is the embodiment of lifestyle laissez faire. He represents Kennedy home turf. Even better, he’s easy to pick on. Once the master of all he surveyed in Boston, Weld has had a run of bad luck, losing a Senate race last year, then quitting the governorship to pursue a post in a city–Washington–he seems too bored or proud to understand. In the Senate bid, Weld refused to support Helms for the foreign-relations chairmanship if elected. The comment was duly noted in Raleigh. Some Senate insiders insist Clinton and Weld might have saved the nomination by privately courting Helms early on. ““That’s ridiculous,’’ said one of Helms’s oldest friends. ““They couldn’t have waved a bigger red flag at the old bull.''
The bull trampled Weld, who has only the faintest hope of a saving deal between Clinton and GOP Senate leader Trent Lott. Helms is not beloved in the Senate, but his colleagues aren’t eager to override him in behalf of a man far to the left of the GOP Senate mainstream. And all senators are loath to invade the prerogatives of any chairman, even one they despise. So Helms was free to challenge Weld to a duel. Weld, he noted, had vowed to ““begin a war’’ within the GOP. ““Let him try,’’ said Helms ominously. It sounded like a warning, but it was really a wish.
