Patrician, Conservative, Insider : Senator’s Style Provides Ticket a Rare Symmetry

Tall, patrician, conservative, an ally of big business, a Washington insider--Lloyd Millard Bentsen Jr. is almost everything that Michael S. Dukakis is not.

As Dukakis’ running mate, the Texas-born Bentsen, chairman of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, is expected to bring an unusual degree of symmetry to a Democratic ticket that will be headed by a liberal son of immigrant parents from the Northeast.

Bentsen, 67, was born to wealth and power. His politics are traditional; his tastes are expensive. In Texas, he is known as a “Tory Democrat”--part of the party Establishment allied with big oil producers and rich agricultural interests.

In fact, it was his alliance with big business that led to the most embarrassing faux pas of Bentsen’s political career, one that he acknowledged to be a real “doozy.” When he was criticized in 1987 for charging corporate lobbyists $10,000 each to attend a series of breakfasts with him, he promptly gave the money back.

On some key policy matters, Bentsen and Dukakis are light years apart. Bentsen’s well-known advocacy of an oil import fee and his consistent support for military aid to Nicaragua’s Contra rebels are anathema to the liberal Dukakis.

Yet those who know Bentsen and Dukakis say the two men both have a quiet sense of self-confidence and a keen instinct for politics that may enable them to bridge the enormous personal and philosophical differences between them.

“To the extent that Dukakis is viewed as a manager and a cool, detached analyzer of problems, Bentsen will intensify that impression of the ticket, because that is what he is too,” said Ben Palumbo, who ran Bentsen’s unsuccessful 1976 bid for the presidency.

Perhaps the only shortcoming of Dukakis that his running mate clearly fails to offset is his lack of charisma. To his colleagues in the Senate, Bentsen is known best for his aloofness--what Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.) describes as “a touch of the aristocrat.”

To make up for his well-known lack of pizazz on the stump, Bentsen has always emphasized party organization. “You don’t find people jumping, screaming and coming to tears when he speaks,” Palumbo acknowledged.

Born into a landed gentry family in the lower Rio Grande Valley, Bentsen was elected judge in Hidalgo County at age 25 after returning home from World War II. Two years later he became the youngest member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Rayburn a Mentor

One of his mentors, then-House Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas, saw him as a young man with a great deal of promise, according to Bentsen’s account to friends. “Lloyd,” Bentsen recalls Rayburn as telling him, “you are doing good. Keep your nose clean and in 30 years you’re going to be a big man around here.”

Bentsen refused to wait 30 years. Instead, he left the House in 1954 after three terms and used his family’s wealth to establish a successful insurance and investment business in Houston. He soon was a multi-millionaire in his own right and ready to run for public office again.

In 1970, he wrested the party’s Senate nomination away from incumbent Democrat Ralph Yarborough and then was elected by doing something that Dukakis would clearly like to duplicate--beating Republican George Bush.

Bentsen, who like Dukakis is fluent in Spanish, has built a strong political organization in his home state by appealing both to the large Latino population and to the business community. His remarkable campaign strength was credited with creating a statewide sweep for the Democrats in 1982, the last time he ran for reelection.

Although comparisons with Lyndon B. Johnson are inevitable, friends caution that Bentsen is a different type of Texan.

“He does not fit the mold of a Texas rich guy throwing big bucks around,” said a long-time admirer. “He’s a man of fine tastes.”

In fact, some people even think Bentsen is a snob--a man with few truly close friends in Congress who never quite lets down his hair among his colleagues. Even when he relaxes on his 130-acre farm on the Shenandoah River in Virginia, visitors say he wears elegant calfskin boots and carefully tailored clothes.

Yet Bentsen’s civil rights record leans toward the liberal. As a freshman House member in 1949, he was one of only seven Southerners to vote to repeal the poll tax, and as a Houston hotel operator in the 1960s, he was one of the first in Texas to accept blacks. At the same time, however, he has also been a regular opponent of school busing to achieve integration.

It is a measure of Bentsen’s keen political instincts as well a reflection of his position on the Senate Finance Committee that he has been in the forefront of the Democrats’ effort to draft legislation to deal with the U.S. trade deficit. His role in this battle is expected to help Dukakis appeal to blue-collar voters.

Other members of the Finance Committee describe Bentsen as a consummate negotiator.

“He’s very well-organized, very thorough and very fair,” said Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.).

“He plays his cards close to the vest,” said Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Mo.). “He’s very attentive to detail.”

Bensten’s interest in health care for children stems from his devotion to his close-knit family. His first granddaughter died of cancer at the age of 2, and two other grandchildren were born handicapped. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) described the usually cool Bentsen as “passionate” when he speaks about the issue.

Bentsen has frequently been mentioned as a possible Democratic vice presidential candidate ever since he ran for President in 1976. In 1984, in fact, Bentsen was somewhat embarrassed to be the only white male that Walter F. Mondale interviewed as a potential running mate, according to aides. They said he told Mondale flatly he did not want the job.

Typically, Bentsen did not confide in his Senate colleagues during his discussions with Dukakis over the past several weeks about the vice presidency. He told Mikulski on Monday night that he did not expect to be chosen. And when Danforth raised the subject with him, he said coyly: “You’re speaking into my deaf ear.”