TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/caps/88/88capcam.2

Text File | 1990-10-21 | 8KB | 145 lines

Patrician Power Player

July 25, 1988

In the back rooms and on the tennis court, he knows the game

When his hopeless and long-forgotten 1976 campaign for the presidency
ended--and even his last-ditch, favorite-son hopes were thoroughly
dashed in his home state by Jimmy Carter--Lloyd Bentsen had still not
passed the asterisk level in national name recognition.  Twelve years
later, at 67, the senior Senator from Texas remains largely unknown
outside his home state and Washington.  His career has played out in
the boardrooms of Houston and the hideaway offices of the Capitol.
The backslapping style of a Lyndon Johnson or a John Connally, two of
his early supporters, is totally foreign to this patrician son of a
wealthy landowner in the Rio Grande Valley.  With his well-cut suits,
nails that look manicured even when they are not, and silver hair he
never lets down, he is Texas without the swagger, the kind of
gentleman that stuffy men's clubs were made for.

Bentsen is the oldest vice-presidential nominee since Harry Truman
picked Senator Alben Barkley, then 71, in 1948.  He lives the life of
a comfortable millionaire in Washington' exclusive Kalorama section.
He did not give up his Mercedes even when he was shepherding
sensitive trade legislation through Congress (although he now drives
a Lincoln).  His wife of 45 years, Beryl Ann, better known as B.A.,
is a former model for Vogue and Mademoiselle who gave up her career
to marry Bentsen in 1943.  Of the rolling-bandage school of Senate
wives, B.A. last year served as first vice chairman of the group's
organization, supervising its lunch for Nancy Reagan, and headed up a
March of Dimes fund raiser.

The couple spend weekends at their farm outside Middleburg in
Virginia's Shenandoah Valley and play power doubles at the annual
Senate tournament at John Gardner's tennis ranch when they can get
away, although Bentsen prefers singles.  With the same understated
courtesy he employs in the Senate, when a ball goes close to the
line, he inquires with a small smile, "And how do you call the
Senator's ball?"

Years ago Bentsen was known as an awesome poker player.  He smiles
coyly when asked about a game his first year in Congress when he won
a house from a fellow Representative.

Bentsen's father Lloyd Sr. was well on his way to his first million
by the time Lloyd Jr. was born in a small cottage on a dirt road in
Mission, Texas.  "Big Lloyd" arrived in Texas from South Dakota with
$1.50 in his pocket and became one of the largest landowners in the
Rio Grande Valley.  He started his empire with a grocery and a land-
clearing operation.  He hired Mexican laborers to clear the land, and
instead of paying them half the contract price, as was the custom, he
paid them the full amount--but in scrip good only in the grocery
store.  Soon he was buying the land he was clearing; the small
cottage gave way to a sprawling ranch house with a 27-acre man-made
lake stocked with ducks and geese.  At 94, Lloyd Sr. is still running
the ranching and farming business, with more than 50,000 acres valued
at around $50 million.

Lloyd Jr. graduated from the University of Texas with a law degree in
1942 and enlisted in the Army.  As a bomber pilot in Europe, he flew
50 missions.  He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross after
being shot down twice.

Bentsen returned to Texas in 1945, and at 25 was elected Hidalgo
County judge.  When he won his House seat two years later, he was its
youngest member.  He did not make much of a mark in his three terms,
and may be best remembered for a speech in 1950 urging that America
drop an atom bomb on North Korea unless its troops retreated north of
the 38th parallel.  Bentsen became one of the youngest members ever
to leave the House voluntarily.  At 33, complaining that the $12,500-
a-year salary was not enough to raise three children on, Bentsen
returned to Texas to start a life-insurance company with a family
stake of $5 million.  He eventually built a corporate empire with
holdings ranging from banking to real estate that by 1970 was
estimated to be worth $25 million.

His fortune made, Bentsen returned to politics in 1970, taking on a
fellow Democrat and populist icon, Senator Ralph Yarborough.  With
the help of the L.B.J.-Connally wing of the party, Bentsen won the
primary in a brawl that was messy even by Texas standards.  Bentsen
linked Yarborough with antiwar demonstrations and ran commercials of
the uproar outside the 1968 Democratic Convention to make his point.
He labeled Senator Edmund Muskie, who came to campaign for
Yarborough, an ultra-liberal.  Yarborough kicked up dust as well,
calling the Bentsens a family of land frauds and exploiters, a
reference to lawsuits that were filed against the senior Bentsen and
settled out of court.  Bentsen's successful general-election race
against George Bush was a much more genteel affair:  A Houston
insurance millionaire and a Houston oil millionaire did not have much
to argue about, at least back then.  Bentsen won, 53% to 47%, a
reflection in part of the huge Democratic majority in Texas.

This time Bentsen cut a wider swath in Washington.  In the days
before economist chic, he quickly established himself as the Senator
with the numbers.  His office was hung with spreadsheets and flow
charts.  In a world of financial illiterates, he became known as a
man of probing analysis and computer-chip memory who actually knew
how to wend intricate tax breaks for the oil and real estate
industries through Congress.

Although Bentsen is proud of representing business interest, he likes
to think of himself as a middle-of-the-road Senator willing to turn
left when conviction or politics dictates.  He has long been an
advocate of civil rights:  he opened his Houston hotel to blacks in
1963, before the law required integration and while other major
hotels remained segregated.  He was one of the few Southern House
members to vote for repeal of the poll tax in 1949.  Personal
circumstances--illness in his family--have softened his view on the
Government's role in social programs.  He is an advocate of federal
health programs for prenatal and neonatal care.

Bentsen has never been a stirring speaker, and in his 1976 try at the
presidency he had difficulty rousing crowds.  In one campaign stop at
the rodeo grounds in Sikeston, Mo., even Minnie Pearl from the Grand
Ole Opry could not overcome the lack of excitement generated by a
Bentsen appearance.  Some 150 people showed up, sitting in small
clumps, a family here, a family there.  The desultory clapping only
emphasized the vastness of the grandstand and the paucity of the
crowd.  The second his stump speech was over, Bentsen stroke angrily
back to his car and shook the Missouri dust off his expensive shoes.
A few months later he ended his campaign, but organizers of the event
remember that day in SIkeston the way others remember a death in the
family.  The 1976 race so discouraged Bentsen that he considered not
running for re-election in 1982.  The lure of becoming chairman of
the Senate Finance Committee once the Democrats regained control
changed his mind.

That occasioned Bentsen's biggest blunder in Washington.  Shortly
after he took over as chairman, Bentsen sent a letter to lobbyists
and political-action committees, establishing a breakfast club.  For
a $10,000 fee, a lobbyist could have ham and eggs monthly with the
Senator.  Bentsen was just one of many Senators offering access for
money in one of the many variations that hover this side of
illegality.  But the baldness of the approach and the fact that he
had no real re-election challenge that required raising the money
caused the Eggs McBentsen affair to unleash a storm of criticism.
Bentsen quickly disbanded the club, called the mistake a "doozy," and
returned the money.  The episode did not cramp his fund-raising
ability:  he has raised over $5 million for his 1988 Senate campaign.
It did, however, give Bentsen a bit more caution, which is the one
trait he seems to share with the man who chose him to run for Vice
President.

--By Margaret B. Carlson.
  Reported by Hays Gorey/Washington and Richard Woodbury/Houston