Lloyd Bentsen, 85, VP candidate was esteemed statesman

WASHINGTON -- Lloyd Bentsen, a Texas congressman, four-term US senator, Democratic nominee for vice president, and secretary of the Treasury during the Clinton administration, died yesterday at his home in Houston of complications of a stroke suffered in 1999. He was 85.

Senator Bentsen was in positions of power and influence for more than half a century but his most auspicious moment took place on national television during the 1988 vice-presidential debate with his Republican opponent, Indiana Senator Dan Quayle. The tall, patrician-looking Texan countered Quayle's self-comparison to John F. Kennedy with the rebuttal, ``Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."

Senator Bentsen was on the ticket in the first place because his Washington credentials buttressed the Washington inexperience of Michael Dukakis, the former Massachusetts governor at the top of the ticket. His Southwestern roots and his ties to the financial community also were considered assets. Most important, he gave the Dukakis-Bentsen ticket a shot at the Lone Star State's 29 electoral votes.

Despite those attributes and a stellar performance by Senator Bentsen on the campaign trail, the Democratic ticket carried only 10 states in 1988, Texas not among them.

``We didn't win, but Kitty and I will never forget B.A. [the senator's wife] and Lloyd Bentsen, and the energy, enthusiasm, and commitment that they gave to us and to the American people," Dukakis said in a statement.

After the loss, Senator Bentsen was re-elected to the Senate by the biggest margin of his long career and stayed until 1992, when he became secretary of the Treasury.

Leaders from both parties hailed Senator Bentsen yesterday. ``During his time in Congress, he was known for his integrity and for seeking bipartisan solutions," President Bush said in a statement. ``Lloyd Bentsen was a man of great honor and distinction."

Former governor Ann Richards, a Democrat, said, ``Many of us credit Lloyd Bentsen with our success and our inspiration."

Lloyd Millard Bentsen Jr. was born in Mission, Texas, in a small frame house a few miles from Mexico in the Rio Grande Valley. The Bentsen family's Pride O Texas citrus trademark was one of the most successful in the Valley.

He received a law degree from the University of Texas at Austin and served as an Army Air Corps bomber pilot in World War II, flying 35 missions in B-24s from southern Italy. At 23, he rose to the rank of major and was given command of a squadron of 600 men. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

After the war, he returned to his native Rio Grande Valley and ran for Congress in 1948, and like another young candidate in Massachusetts a couple of years earlier -- John F. Kennedy -- he used his wartime exploits to campaign advantage. He won easily.

At 27, he was the youngest member of the House and quickly became part of Speaker Sam Rayburn's inner circle. Lyndon Johnson, then the powerful Senate majority leader, also cultivated him.

Representative Bentsen compiled a diverse record, looking after such traditional Texas interests as natural gas deregulation but also voting to repeal the poll tax used in the South to discourage voting among African Americans. He was one of only two Southern congressmen to do so.

In 1955, bored with politics and finding it difficult to raise a family in Washington on a salary of $12,500 a year, he left Congress and began a business career in Houston. With substantial backing from his father, he eventually became president of Lincoln Consolidated, an insurance company.

In 1970, he sold his business and declared his candidacy for the US Senate. Johnson, who had recently left the White House, tried to talk him out of it, warning, ``I just don't believe you can beat Ralph Yarborough." Yarborough was the Democratic incumbent, a beloved liberal icon.

In the primary, Yarborough initially dismissed his opponent as an ``insurance promoter." Senator Bentsen, however, beat him with 53 percent of the vote and immediately set out to mend fences with the liberals. With support from organized labor, he ran against the Republican candidate, Houston congressman George H.W. Bush, criticizing Bush for supporting gun control and a guaranteed annual income for the poor. In a battle between a Houston insurance millionaire and a Houston oil millionaire, the insurance man won, 53 to 47 percent.

Initially wary, liberal Democrats came to admire Senator Bentsen's willingness to set aside differences to build coalitions and to deal fairly with African Americans and Hispanics. Given his lifelong familiarity with the Valley, he spoke Spanish fluently.

Senator Bentsen often said his proudest accomplishment in the Senate was pension reform. He said he was motivated to push for reform after learning that a Houston man, whose wife taught Sunday school with Senator Bentsen's wife, was fired after 29 years with a company whose pension plan didn't vest until 30 years' service.

As a member of the Finance Committee and the Joint Economic Committee, he also believed in using the tax code to provide incentives for a variety of activities -- to save, to produce oil, to make college loans. It was an idea he shared with President Reagan.

In 1976, he made a run for the White House, but despite spending heavily, his campaign went nowhere. A decade later, the Democrats recaptured control of the Senate, and Senator Russell B. Long of Louisiana, the longtime Democratic leader on the Finance Committee, retired. Senator Bentsen took his place and handled a number of major bills. He also served as chairman of the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Joint Economic Committee.

He was the consummate insider who knew the tax laws thoroughly and who was respected by his peers, regardless of party. He also had the ear of Wall Street. Although he was sometimes labeled ``Loophole Lloyd" for his ability to draft legislation that gave tax benefits to the oil and gas industries, he managed to avoid impropriety over his long career, even during a savings and loan scandal that engulfed several Democratic colleagues in the 1980s.

When Dukakis chose Senator Bentsen as his vice-presidential running mate, he had become the most popular politician in Texas.

His merciless put-down of Quayle was not spontaneous. While preparing for the debate, he expressed his frustration with the ability of the Republicans to successfully identify with Democratic heroes and to espouse what sounded like Democratic positions on such issues as the environment. Quayle had alluded to Kennedy on other occasions during the campaign, so Senator Bentsen, like a brush country rattlesnake, was poised to strike.

Although the Dukakis-Bentsen ticket lost the election to Bush, the man Senator Bentsen had defeated in the 1970 Senate race, Senator Bentsen emerged with his political career in the ascendancy. He was widely considered the odds-on favorite for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992. But with Bush's popularity soaring in 1991, he decided to stay in the Senate.

He retired from the Senate to serve as secretary of the Treasury. Senator Bentsen played a major role in several of Clinton's most significant achievements in the early years of his presidency. The $500 billion deficit reduction measure, passed by a narrow margin, helped to drive the federal deficit sharply downward, and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), although controversial, dramatically changed American trade policy with Mexico.

``I couldn't leave with the economic flag flying any higher," he said when he announced his resignation in 1994. ``We have the best numbers we have seen in 30 years. I believe history will show that we have made the economic future of our children and grandchildren more secure by the politically difficult actions we have taken."

He returned to Houston but was a regular visitor to the Clinton White House. Something of a father figure to Bill Clinton, he proffered advice not only on economic matters but also on how to deal with his impeachment. In 1999, Clinton presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. He was in a wheelchair by then, the victim of a severe stroke that impaired his speech and mobility.

In addition to his wife of 63 years, Senator Bentsen leaves three children, Lloyd III, Lan and Tina Bentsen Smith, all of Houston; and eight grandchildren.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this obituary.