Lloyd Bentsen, 85; U.S. Senator Zinged Quayle in '88 VP Debate

By Dennis McLellan

May 24, 2006 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

Lloyd Bentsen, the former four-term U.S. senator from Texas who was the 1988 Democratic vice presidential nominee and served as President Clinton’s first secretary of the Treasury, died Tuesday. He was 85.

Bentsen, who had been in poor health since suffering two strokes in 1998, died at his home in Houston, a family spokesman said.

In a statement Tuesday, President Bush called Bentsen “a man of great honor and distinction.”

During his 22 years in the Senate, the tall and courtly millionaire was known for his generally conservative voting record on foreign policy and economic issues while he maintained a more moderate position on many social issues.

But Bentsen may be best remembered for his retort to Indiana Sen. Dan Quayle during the 1988 presidential campaign.

The silver-haired Bentsen, who had campaigned unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, was chosen by Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis to be his presidential running mate.

During a nationally televised debate between the 67-year-old Bentsen and the 41-year-old Republican vice presidential nominee, Quayle said he had “as much experience in the Congress as Jack Kennedy did when he sought the presidency.”

Bentsen’s response to Quayle’s statement resulted in the 90-minute debate’s most dramatic -- and enduringly memorable -- moment.

“Senator,” Bentsen said in a somber tone, glaring at Quayle, “I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”

Bruce Buchanan, a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, said Bentsen’s memorable comment was “handled in a way that, despite it clearly being a put-down, he delivered it with a certain amount of gravitas, which is characteristic of the man.

“That’s one of the reasons why people took him seriously and gave him important positions and put him on national tickets.”

“I have lost a valued friend and wonderful running mate,” Dukakis told the Associated Press on Tuesday. “The nation has lost a great public servant.”

Although George H.W. Bush and Quayle won an overwhelming victory over Dukakis and Bentsen in 1988, the Texas senator grew in stature as a result of the campaign.

Bentsen, who also was known as a bipartisan coalition builder and one of the most influential legislators in Washington, headed the powerful Senate Finance Committee from 1987 to 1992. He capped his long career in politics by serving as Clinton’s Treasury secretary from 1993 to 1994.

In a joint statement Tuesday, Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said of Bentsen: “His leadership was critical to the development and passage of our economic plan, and he deserves much credit for the prosperity, fiscal responsibility and poverty reduction it produced.”

In 1999, Clinton gave Bentsen the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

“Historians will see Lloyd Bentsen as a moderate, national Democrat in the tradition of Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson,” Patrick Cox, associate director of the Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, said Tuesday.

Bentsen, Cox said, “successfully confounded both admirers and critics as he followed both a conservative and progressive agenda -- often seeking to find consensus to issues that challenged the nation.”

Over the years, those who knew Bentsen have described him as strong, reserved, low key, and a personable gentleman in the old Southern style.

“I’m not the typical, back-slapping politician,” Bentsen acknowledged in a 1988 interview with the Dallas Times Herald. “That’s not my nature.... I’ve always been one who, in spite of being a very quiet person, likes to do new, challenging things.”

Lloyd Millard Bentsen Jr. was born Feb. 11, 1921, in Mission, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, where his father had moved a year before World War I and later built the family fortune through citrus farming and investing in real estate.

Bentsen, who spent part of his childhood in McAllen, Texas, graduated from high school at 15 and earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Texas at Austin.

In 1942, after getting a law degree from the university at 21, he enlisted in the Army.

As a B-24 bomber pilot, he flew combat missions in Europe, where he was shot down twice and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters.

He married Beryl Ann Longino (known as B.A.), a former University of Texas student who became a New York fashion model, in 1943.

After he returned home following the war, Bentsen launched his political career. He was elected Hidalgo County judge in 1946 and two years later won election to the U.S. House of Representatives -- at 27 the House’s youngest member.

In Washington, Bentsen befriended Lyndon Johnson and House Speaker Rayburn, and was one of the few Southern congressmen who voted against the poll tax, which prevented blacks and other minorities from voting.

By 1953, Bentsen was finding it difficult to support his wife and three children on his congressional salary of $12,500 a year so he did not seek reelection.

With a reported $5-million start-up loan from his father and uncle, Bentsen founded a life insurance firm in Houston in 1955. By 1967, Consolidated American Life Insurance Co. and other Bentsen ventures had melded into a holding company called Lincoln Consolidated Inc.

In 1970, having built a fortune in business, Bentsen reentered politics by challenging liberal Democratic Sen. Ralph Yarborough.

“I decided I wanted to do something more with my life, to be remembered for something more than my financial statement,” Bentsen said at the time.

After beating Yarborough in a bruising primary, Bentsen defeated his Republican rival, Rep. George H.W. Bush.

As a senator, Cox said, Bentsen supported business initiatives to expand trade, balance the budget and reduce taxes. Known as an ardent supporter of special tax breaks for real estate, oil and gas producers and other industries, Bentsen was dubbed “Loophole Lloyd” by critics of his tax proposals.

He also supported civil rights programs, expansion of Medicare and Medicaid, pension reform and women’s reproductive rights.

Bentsen, who learned to speak fluent Spanish as a child, also was known for nurturing support among Mexican Americans in south Texas.

“He has always treated Hispanics with respect and he had always been responsive to Hispanic elected officials,” Henry Munoz, a Democratic Party official from Bexar County, once told the Chicago Tribune.

Bentsen had a reputation as one of the Democratic Party’s most skillful fundraisers, but he ran into trouble in 1987 soon after becoming chairman of the Senate Finance Committee when it was revealed that he had been soliciting $10,000 contributions for his reelection drive from lobbyists in exchange for monthly breakfasts with him.

Calling the breakfasts -- which Washington humorist Mark Russell dubbed “Eggs McBentsen” -- a “doozy” of a mistake, Bentsen returned the $92,500 he had raised.

After he resigned as Treasury secretary in 1994, Bentsen and his wife returned to Texas.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid praised Bentsen on the Senate floor Tuesday as “a guiding light,” and Texas Gov. Rick Perry ordered that flags at state buildings be flown at half-staff for five days in Bentsen’s memory.

Bentsen is survived by his wife; three children, Lloyd Bentsen III, Lan Bentsen and Tina Bentsen Smith; and eight grandchildren.