With Helms Firmly at Helm, Weld’s Hearing Hopes Sink

It was American democracy on full display and it was not pretty.

With all the civility of a college food fight, Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), the crusty chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, squared off Friday against William F. Weld, the aloof former Massachusetts governor who wants to be ambassador to Mexico, in a verbal slugfest that began with a brief committee hearing and later spilled into the hallways outside.

By the time the dust settled, the nomination of Weld, a moderate Republican, seemed headed exactly where Helms wanted it to go: nowhere. Indeed, unless either Helms or Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who has backed Helms, make U-turns, Friday’s confrontation appeared to doom one of the most bizarre campaigns for an ambassadorship in the history of the Republic.

“I don’t know how it can be more dead than it was. But for us, it’s certainly the end of the matter,” commented a Republican aide close to Helms.

Talking to reporters in the Oval Office after the meeting ended, President Clinton insisted that “the battle is not over yet” and urged the full Senate to find some way to circumvent Helms and act. Yet without a groundswell of public outrage, it seems highly unlikely that a majority of the Senate would act against the majority leader.

On Friday, Lott reiterated his call for the president to withdraw Weld’s nomination.

So far, the confrontation has had considerable fallout. In showcasing the capacity of one senator to deny even a hearing to a presidential nominee, it has given American democracy a black eye. The dispute also has damaged the administration’s carefully nurtured working relationship with Helms, a conservative who opposes key elements of Clinton’s foreign policy agenda.

In the process, the United States remains without an ambassador to one of its most important partner countries, and the Republicans appear to be in the midst of an unseemly internal squabble.

And Weld, who some believe has used the campaign to give himself a national political profile for a future presidential bid, in the end may be smiling quietly to himself. For, if nothing else, he certainly achieved that.

Friday’s events marked the culmination of a fight that began earlier this summer when Weld, despite earlier signs of disapproval from Helms, answered Clinton’s nomination by announcing that he would give up his job as governor of Massachusetts to become America’s man in Mexico City.

Helms, citing Weld’s liberal views on the medicinal use of marijuana, vowed that he would never let someone who was soft on drugs become ambassador to Mexico, a country that is a major conduit for drugs into the United States.

Weld countered that Helms was engaging in “ideological extortion,” and vowed to fight. After weeks of political jostling, a majority of Helms’ 19-member committee earlier this week signed a letter that forced him to convene Friday’s meeting.

It is one of the Founding Fathers’ many checks and balances that requires the president to receive Senate approval for all ambassadorial appointments.

But instead of a hearing on Weld’s nomination, the session turned into a civics lesson on the power of Senate committee chairmen. Under Senate rules, a majority of committee members may be able to force a meeting, but it is the chairman who determines the meeting’s agenda, its length and who will be permitted to speak.

Helms made the most of his considerable powers.

After yielding briefly to the committee’s ranking Democrat, Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, who argued for a hearing on Weld’s nomination, Helms kept the floor to make his own case. He first lambasted media coverage of the nomination, charging that it had created a “circus atmosphere,” and then announced that the sole purpose of the meeting would be to refute accusations that his refusal to give Weld a hearing was unprecedented.

He went on to attack his Republican colleague, Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, whose open opposition to Helms and demands for a hearing helped force the meeting. When Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) asked Helms quietly, “Could I just ask you one question,” Helms responded: “No, sir.” When Kerry began again, he got out only the words, “But we . . . ,” before Helms slammed the chairman’s gavel to the table, demanding order.

Several minutes later, Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) suffered a similar fate. Breaking in as Helms attacked Lugar, Wellstone asked if Lugar should not have the right to respond.

“No,” Helms barked. When Wellstone persisted, he too was gaveled to silence.

The other senators present remained silent, like schoolchildren trapped in a teacher’s tirade.

Weld, who observed the goings-on from the back of the room, spoke to reporters after the 30-minute meeting.

“It seemed almost that the chairman was set on a course to prove that the United States Senate is a despotic institution,” he charged, predicting that such an effort “is bound ultimately to fail.”

He indicated that he has no plans to withdraw his nomination and would now try to appeal directly to the public to build pressure for a hearing.

“I think people out there on Main Street are not going to understand why one person should be able to make a decision to override a matter that by our Constitution is vested in the president and all 100 members of the Senate,” he said.

Many Senate observers believe that Weld, with his defiant responses to Helms, cost himself much-needed support. In July, he openly attacked Helms at a news conference, claiming that Helms’ opposition had little to do with his stand on drugs but was focused instead on his liberal stances on such issues as gay rights. Later, he described his fight for a hearing as a war.

Political analysts have speculated that such a head-on confrontation with a conservative Republican was a calculated move on Weld’s part to stake his claim as a spokesman for the party’s moderate wing as the next presidential campaign approaches.

Helms’ staff on Friday released a letter to Clinton written last month in which Helms seemed to offer a compromise, saying that he was prepared to schedule hearings for Weld to serve as ambassador to any country not linked to the drug trade. A Helms staff member said that India was discussed briefly but that Weld insisted on Mexico.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California’s senior Democratic senator, expressed dismay and shame at the way Friday’s meeting was conducted.

“In the 4 1/2 years I’ve been in the United States Senate, this is the first time I have felt ashamed to be a member of the body,” she said. “The actions . . . did not take place on the basis of democratic principles. I would hazard a guess that there is no town council anywhere in the United States that would do this kind of thing.”

During the meeting, Helms presented the findings of a Congressional Research Office search that turned up 154 previous presidential nominees over the last 10 years who had not received a hearing. Helms said one of those, Margo E. Machol, nominated by President Bush as a member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, was denied a hearing by Lugar.

Senate historian Richard Baker said he believes it likely that the number of presidential nominations that died without a hearing may well exceed 154. But he added that he has been unable to find a single instance in which a hearing was denied after a formal request from a majority of committee members.

“I’m not saying it hasn’t happened. I’m saying I can’t find any examples of such an action,” he said.

Friday’s meeting began with a hint of possible compromise in the air as Helms posed happily with Weld for photographers, shaking his head and asking the nominee jauntily if he had his visa. Weld smiled back and patted his breast pocket, noting that he was carrying his passport with him.

The smiles faded as soon as the meeting opened.