Unaffordable Blot

Bully-boy Jesse Helms, the chum of fascist dictators and racist regimes, is trying to muscle his way into the top Republican seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the forthcoming 100th Congress. The Reagan Administration and other Republican senators should make certain that Helms does not get his way.

American foreign policy is fraught with enough trouble and confusion these days without giving Helms this platform for his singular brand of ranting and international vigilantism. Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) has done a commendable job as Foreign Relations chairman for the past two years. He should be retained as the ranking minority member during the coming two years under Democratic leadership.

By Senate tradition, Helms has a legitimate claim to the top GOP spot on the 17-member committee. He outranks Lugar by four years in the Senate, although the two joined the committee at the same time. But while seniority still carries considerable clout in the Senate, no longer is it the only criterion for leadership. In this case common sense provides an overwhelming mandate for Lugar.

Lugar has been a moderate, constructive leader interested in producing sound legislation. Helms is a whiny obstructionist who has wrought more mischief on the Administration’s foreign-policy program than any other member of Congress.

In the past two years alone, Helms has warred with the State Department and bottled up the President’s appointments of respected officials to foreign-policy positions. He and his staff have been accused of tipping off Chilean officials to a sensitive U.S. intelligence operation in Chile, where Helms is a buddy of military dictator Augusto Pinochet. Helms has scorned and ridiculed governmental leaders in neighboring Mexico, and is almost alone in Congress in his admiration for the segregationist government of South Africa.

Helms’ dilemma is a product of his own political opportunism. Two years ago he was forced to pass up his chance to be chairman of Foreign Relations because he promised North Carolina farmers in his desperate 1984 campaign that he would take the chairmanship of the Agriculture Committee to protect their tobacco and peanut subsidies. Now he wants to leave his mark on U.S. foreign policy before possible retirement in 1990, including the opportunity to be chairman if the Republicans should regain control of the Senate.

That is a mark--or a blot--that the country cannot afford.