Sen. Helms, Stop Whistling Dixie

When Jesse Helms of North Carolina entered the U.S. Senate in 1973, he quickly earned the nickname “Senator No.” Many of Helms’ early battles were delaying actions against racial equity, including his “no” on extensions of the Voting Rights Act, which he called “insulting and degrading to the South.” He also opposed redress to Japanese Americans for internment, was a reliable vote against the Martin Luther King holiday and against housing laws that make it illegal to discriminate. He’s nothing if not consistent. Since 1987, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Helms has turned his “no” in different directions, such as against the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and against normalizing U.S. relations with Cuba. Now, with his vow to hold up the nomination of former Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun (D-Ill.) as ambassador to New Zealand, Helms combines the worst of his old and new selves.

There may be legitimate issues of contention in the nomination of Moseley-Braun, who lost her Senate seat in 1998. But here’s what Helms is fixating on: his demand that Braun ought to apologize for leading a successful drive in 1993 to deny the Daughters of the Confederacy a renewal of patent rights on their symbol, which features an early version of the Confederate flag. The request had been brought to the Senate floor by Helms. But after the impassioned argument of Moseley-Braun--the first African American woman to serve in the Senate--that the flag was a symbol of slavery, 75 senators voted down the request.

Helms now says, according to Roll Call magazine: “At the very least she has got to apologize for the display that she provoked over a little symbol . . . “

Helms has opposed only one other Clinton ambassadorial nomination, that of fellow Republican William Weld in 1997, so his action against Moseley-Braun stands out as an ugly personal grudge. Braun tells a story of Helms later getting on a Senate elevator and singing “Dixie,” vowing to keep it up “until she cries.” Moseley-Braun said she replied: “Senator Helms, your singing would make me cry if you sang ‘Rock of Ages.’ ” It was a clever response to a Senate anachronism whose ideas belong alongside those of the Flat Earth Society.