Rest in peace, Senator Bentsen

Any writing I would have done today is going to be pushed aside in deference to this morning’s passing of former Senator and Secretary of the Treasury Lloyd Bentsen. In a world were politicians are generally held in the same contempt as lawyers, this was a truly good, able, accomplished, and sincere man. He was unquestionably one of the great statesmen that this country produced. I’d like to republish the Houston Chronicle’s write up as I certainly could not do better:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/3882276.html
Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr., a Texas patrician who made a sizable fortune in private business and an even bigger name in national government as a U.S. senator and Treasury secretary, died today. He was 85.

Bentsen, in failing health for more than a decade after a stroke in 1995, died at his home in Houston, said family spokesman Bill Maddox.

A handful of family members and friends arrived late this morning at the guarded gate of the Bentsen home on Indian Circle in the Tanglewood area. Shortly before noon, the gate opened and a hearse from George H. Lewis & Sons drove out, followed by two cars.

There will be a private graveside service at Forest Park Lawndale Cemetery in Houston and then a memorial service at First Presbyterian Church. The dates have not been set yet.

On the state political stage for almost half a century, Bentsen was a link to the heyday of Texas Democratic politics, when the regular wing of the state party was the fiefdom of then-Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson and House Speaker Sam Rayburn, Bentsen's most influential early mentor.

Although Bentsen helped Johnson in the 1950s to fend off a conservative challenge for control of the party, Bentsen gained his own first statewide victory in 1970 by defeating Texas' reigning liberal icon, Sen. Ralph W. Yarborough, in the Democratic primary. In the general election that year, Bentsen beat Republican George Bush, delaying his fellow Houstonian's national political ascent.

True to his Tory Democratic roots, Bentsen was an unabashed advocate of his state's oil industry and an early proponent of cutting corporate and capital gain tax rates.

Bentsen was a member of a prosperous Rio Grande Valley family, and almost everything he touched seemed to turn to gold, be it far-flung personal investments, the insurance company he founded in the 1950s or his political career, which stretched from being Hidalgo County judge immediately after World War II to taking a seat in the Cabinet during President Clinton's first administration in 1993.

His political career, at least, was not without its disappointments. His campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, only six years after returning to Washington as a senator, cratered in the early caucuses.

Bentsen, however, could pull laurels even from the ashes, and he enhanced his standing as an astute politician in 1988 as the dogged Democratic vice-presidential running mate of Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis.

In the vice-presidential debate that year, Bentsen hammered Republican Sen. Dan Quayle, with an artful putdown that found its way into everyday speech.

When his younger opponent compared himself to President John F. Kennedy, Bentsen, his voice dripping with disdain, retorted: "Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy."

Ever the pragmatic politician, Bentsen made it clear he knew he had establishment Republican supporters in Texas who would support his simultaneous Senate re-election bid even though they would forsake Dukakis-Bentsen in the national race for the Republican ticket led by Bush, who was moving up after eight years as Ronald Reagan's vice president.

During much of the last three decades, Bentsen was one of the most respected and important voices in the nation, and sometimes beyond, on federal fiscal policy.

Throughout his business and political career, including more than a quarter-century in public life in the the nation's capital, Bentsen became known as a savant who could spot a trend before it became one.

He was also ahead of his time in private commerce. He built a financial services company in Houston in the 1960s, long before such institutions became a dime a dozen.

Bentsen was a serious man and a no-nonsense operator in a trade sometimes known for easy — and often phony — affability. Bentsen was sociable, but his public style stopped far short of the voluble, chummy demeanor that was the hallmark of many Texas colleagues.

He could freeze staff aides with a glare and insisted on virtual perfection from his assistants — and sometimes from his notional superiors.

An autographed picture from President Clinton was inscribed: "To my friend Lloyd Bentsen, who makes me study things until I get it right."

Bentsen returned to his high-finance roots when he left government, taking on the leadership of the advisory panel at Beacon Group, a New York-based inverstment bank.

When he suffered a mild stroke in 1998, Bentsen conceded it came at the end of a three-month travel marathon during which he had been to 15 countries on four continents in three months.
"I enjoy challenges and being involved," Bentsen said.

Bentsen had an expansive life outside of commerce and politics. He was a voracious traveler, personally keeping notes and filing away clippings about places he wanted to visit — in the 1970s sometimes aboard the yacht he captained. And he indulged his sporting side, once buying a house in a resort development near San Diego, Calif., because he liked its tennis pro.

Bentsen and his wife, the former Beryl Ann Longino from Lufkin, were for years among the most attractive and sought after couples on the Washington social scene.

Bentsen, with silver hair and a handsome, angular visage that spoke of his Danish heritage, outfitted himself spectacularly, whether it was a carefully tailored business suit or smartly casual chamois windbreaker.

Bentsen's wife — known universally as B.A., which he said stood for Bentsen's "best asset," — became a political personality in her own right as a member of the Democratic National Committee from Texas for many years.

Lloyd Millard Bentsen Jr. was born Feb. 11, 1921, in Mission, where his father had moved after a hardscrabble upbringing in the Dakotas.

The son attended the University of Texas, receiving a law degree. He enlisted in the Army early in World War II and was a major by the time of his discharge in 1945. He flew 50 mission in Europe and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Bentsen was among the young veterans who stormed the political barricades soon after returning from military service. He was elected county judge of his native Hidalgo County in 1946.

When a Rio Grande Valley seat in the U.S. House — the one once represented by Vice President John Nance Garner — opened in 1948, Bentsen won a special election.
Highlight of the tenure, which would make Bentsen wince with embarassment in later years, was his proposal in 1950 that President Truman threaten to use nuclear weapons against China in the Korean war.

He was, however, not an orthodox conservative Southerner. Bentsen was one of only seven House members from the old Confederacy in 1949 to vote to outlaw the poll tax — a registration fee that effectively kept many minorities and poor people from voting. As a businessman in the 1960s, Bentsen insisted that a Houston hotel in which he was the primary investor be open to black customers, making it the first in the city to take that step.

In 1970, Bentsen narrowly defeated Bush. The Democrat widened his margin in 1976. And in 1982, playing paterfamilias to the remainder of the state Democratic ticket, Bentsen won by almost 20 percentage points and helped gubernatorial candidate Mark White across the finish line.

In 1988, Bentsen won the Senate race by an even bigger margin, even as he and Dukakis were losing the state to Bush-Quayle.

When Clinton was elected in 1992, he asked Bentsen to become his Treasury secretary. Some presidential aides indicated the move was principally to get Bentsen out of the Senate — and the chairmanship of the Finance Committee, a position from which Bentsen could have blocked some of the new Democratic leader's more liberal economic proposals.

Many intimates believed that not long after arriving at the neo-classical Treasury Building next door to the White House, Bentsen wished he had never left Capitol Hill.

Bentsen refused to be drawn out very far on the question and rejected several proposals that he write about his long, varied career and ties with the most famous politicians of the post-World War II era.

Bentsen recorded an oral history with the University of Texas which cannot be opened until five years after his death.

By CRAGG HINES
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau