Lloyd Bentsen

Lloyd Bentsen (born February 11, 1921, Mission, Texas, U.S.—died May 23, 2006, Houston, Texas) was an American Democratic politician who was a longtime U.S. senator (1971–93) before serving as secretary of the treasury (1993–94) in the presidential administration of Bill Clinton. Bentsen was also the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for vice president in 1988, running on a ticket with Michael Dukakis.

Bentsen, whose father was a millionaire landowner, was raised in McAllen, Texas. In 1942 he received a law degree from the University of Texas and joined the U.S. Army. He became a commissioned pilot, served in combat in Italy in World War II (earning a Distinguished Flying Cross), and in 1945 was discharged as a colonel and established a law practice in McAllen. He served as a judge in Hidalgo county from 1946 to 1948. In 1948 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, winning both the general election and a special election to complete the term of Milton West, who had died in office. Bentsen was reelected twice and served until 1955, voting with most other Texas Democrats except for his support of a bill to end poll taxes. In 1955 he left politics, borrowing money from relatives to form the Consolidated American Life Insurance Co.—later called Lincoln Consolidated, Inc.—with himself as president and offices in Houston.

In 1970 Bentsen ran for the U.S. Senate. In the Democratic primary he defeated Ralph Yarborough, considered an antibusiness liberal, and in the general election he defeated the Republican candidate, future president George Bush. Reelected to the Senate in 1976 and 1982, he became chairman of the Finance Committee in 1987. Though many considered him a conservative, Bentsen voted with the majority of Democratic senators as often as not.

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In July 1988 Dukakis tapped Bentsen to be his running mate, to face the Republican ticket headed by Pres. George Bush and Vice Pres. Dan Quayle. The choice of Bentsen was a surprise because of his reputation as a conservative, but he emerged from the often nasty campaign as probably the least-disliked national candidate and demonstrated his skills as a public speaker, persuader, and fund-raiser. Debating Quayle in Omaha, Nebraska, on October 5, Bentsen scored no overwhelming victory but offered a response to Quayle’s self-comparison with John F. Kennedy that proved unanswerable and was perhaps the most memorable of the entire campaign: “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy.” Allowed by Texas law to run as both a national and a state candidate, Bentsen on November 8 was elected to his fourth term in the U.S. Senate, but he and Dukakis lost the presidential election by a wide margin, including in Bentsen’s home state.

He resigned from the Senate on January 20, 1993, having been selected by Clinton to serve as treasury secretary. Bentsen left that post in 1994. In 1993 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honour.