Bill Press is a syndicated columnist and the co-host of CNN's Crossfire, which airs Monday-Friday at 7:30 p.m.

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Bill Press: Democrats lament loss of Helms

By Bill Press
Tribune Media Services

WASHINGTON (Tribune Media Services) -- It was a sad day for Democrats when Senator Jesse Helms announced his retirement from the U.S. Senate. How will they ever survive without their favorite punching bag?

For decades, Helms has been the Democrats' best friend. He was their number one cash register. To scare up campaign contributions, all party officials had to do was mention the name "Jesse Helms" -- and checks would pour in from Democrats around the country to defeat any Republican running for office.

And, no wonder. Helms was the ideal target. He was anti-women's rights, anti-gay rights, anti-environment, anti-recognition of Martin Luther King's birthday, anti-affirmative action, and anti-funding for the arts. Not for nothing was he called "Senator No." He never pretended to be compassionate. Hollywood could not create a more perfect ogre.

And for years, the most effective winning strategy for any Democratic Senate candidate from any state was simply to announce he or she was going to Washington to take on Jesse Helms. I remember when Barbara Boxer first ran for Senate in California in 1992.

The diminutive Boxer thrilled audiences by standing on her tiptoes, pointing her finger, and telling them: "My first day on the floor of the Senate, I'm going to walk up to Jesse Helms and say: 'Senator, I'm here now. You will no longer get away with treating people the way you do.'" Jesse Helms did as much as anyone to elect Barbara Boxer.

But no longer. Sadly, he'll soon be gone and Democrats will lack their bogeyman. They'll be stuck with Trent Lott, Dick Armey and Tom Delay -- who are pretty scary, but nowhere near as scary, or predictably outrageous, as Sen. Helms of North Carolina.

As difficult as his departure is for Democrats, however, they can console themselves with the fact that they are sacrificing Helms for the good of the entire country. Indeed, their loss is the nation's gain. The United States will be a better place without Jesse Helms in the U. S. Senate.

Even though he served 30 years, there's not one thing you can point to that Helms accomplished as senator. That's because his mission was not to get things done - it was to prevent things from getting done. He was a one-man blockade. He blocked, or tried to block, everything he didn't believe in: from clean water to arms control, from trade with Cuba to extension of the Voting Rights Act. And, in the last 8 years, he blocked appointment of any African-American to North Carolina's federal bench.

But Helms may be longest remembered as a vestige of the Jim Crow South. Running for re-election in 1996, against Harvey Gantt, Helms ran a television commercial that showed a pair of white hands crumbling up a pink slip as the announcer said: "You needed that job, and you were the best qualified, but they had to give it to a minority, because of a racial quota. Is that really fair? Harvey Gantt says it is. Gantt supports Ted Kennedy's racial quota law that makes the color of your skin more important than your qualifications."

That statement was not only untrue -- no version of affirmative action ever required taking a job from a white man and giving it to a minority -- it was downright racist. What Helms was doing was reminding everyone that he was a white man running against a black man, and asking them to vote against Harvey Gantt, simply because he was black.

In the American tradition of trying to find something nice to say about anyone who dies or retires, no matter how obnoxious they've been in real life, some people have rushed to praise Jesse Helms for two things: he always stuck to his guns; and he voted to pay our debt to the United Nations. They're wasting their breath. Sure, Helms finally supported funding for the U.N., but only after starving, attacking and weakening it for many years.

And there's no merit in sticking to your guns when all your guns are pointed in the wrong direction.

Instead of searching for good things to say about Jesse Helms, we should simply tell the truth. He was against everything, and for nothing. He was so extreme he was an embarrassment, even to conservatives. His departure marks the end of an era.

There will never be another one like him. Thank God.