Fresh on the heels of saying that politicians don’t matter much, here are my thoughts on a particular politician. Former Republican North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms died Friday at the age of 86.

Helms was a polarizing figure. Some will never forgive him for what they see as his unrepentant bigotry. In his later years, though, his public image seems to have been granted a pardon. (Sort of the way John Madden went from coach of the meanest, most drug-addled Oakland Raiders to charming old bus-riding football commentator and hardware-store pitch-man.)

I wouldn’t endorse all his views, but I was impressed by a speech he gave to the United Nations in 2000, very late in his career. Helms was long active in foreign relations, a strong anti-communist, and was then serving as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was a critic of the U.N. and an opponent of many of its programs and plans. His speech there – the first of a sitting U.S. Senator – pulled no punches. He gave his reasons why:

As matters now stand, many Americans sense that the UN has greater ambitions than simply being an efficient deliverer of humanitarian aid, a more effective peacekeeper, a better weapons inspector, and a more effective tool of great power diplomacy. They see the UN aspiring to establish itself as the central authority of a new international order of global laws and global governance. This is an international order the American people will not countenance.
. . .
. . . Americans reject the idea of a sovereign United Nations that presumes to be the source of legitimacy for the United States Government’s policies, foreign or domestic. There is only one source of legitimacy of the American government’s policies – and that is the consent of the American people.

This is a vision of governmental power with deep roots in the U.S. Constitution and American history that should not be forgotten. It is something that has not grown quaint in modern times, though many would have it that way.

In 1988, I was a college intern in the Senate, and was waiting for an elevator in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, where the wait can be long. Senator Helms saw me standing there as he shambled toward the bank of “Senators Only” elevators. He said, in his classic drawl, “Come on and ride with me. You’ll collect Social Security waiting for these.” That was a cute kindness that belies the image of Helms as a wicked arch-conservative.

Part of Helms’ redemption in the eyes of the popular press comes from his late-career support for AIDS relief in Africa (notably because transmission of the disease there was primarily through heterosexual sex, and not any other kind). Spending American taxpayer dollars on any kind of foreign aid was a big step for Helms.

Today, AIDS relief has become something of a tradition attached to Foreign Relations Committee chairmen. Bills pending in the House and Senate right now would spend about $300 per U.S. family on assistance to foreign countries to combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. They are named after recently deceased House Foreign Relations Committee chairmen Tom Lantos and Henry Hyde.