The American Spectator

But the rest of his victories were short-lived. Helms terrified the foreign policy establishment when in 1986 he won the party’s ranking slot on the Foreign Relations committee. He defeated a more moderate Republican for the job, and he walked out of the party’s vote smiling at the press corps. “I’m sorry to disappoint you folks,” he said to reporters. “I hate to ruin your day, but you lost.”

From 1995 to 2001, when he led the committee, he put fear in the bones of internationalists, killed the nominations of people who favored Third World birth control, and delighted the right. But the man he defeated for the job, Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, came back to run the committee after Helms retired. That’s the same Lugar who co-sponsored arms control legislation with Barack Obama, and whom Obama says might have a place in his cabinet.

Flick on talk radio and you’ll hear Helms’s legacy. Flick on C-Span and you’ll wonder if the man had any impact at all.