Former US Sen. Charles Percy of Illinois was 'fervently moderate'

Former US Sen. Charles Percy of Illinois, who passed on Saturday, was a moderate Republican whose views put him at odds with conservatives including former President Richard Nixon.

Former Sen. Charles H. Percy, a Foreign Relations Committee chairman whose moderate Republican views put him at odds with conservatives including former President Richard Nixon, died Saturday in Washington.

Elected to the first of his three Senate terms in 1966, Percy was mentioned as a possible presidential candidate. He was helped by handsome looks, a rich baritone voice and the relaxed self-confidence of the successful business executive he once was.

But the silver-haired senator, a supporter of the GOP's Nelson Rockefeller wing, came to power when moderate Republicans were becoming unfashionable on Capitol Hill. He ended up backing former President Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination in 1976 rather than go for it himself.

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After that his chances seemed to fade. He won one more term in 1978 but was narrowly defeated for re-election in 1984 by Democrat Rep. Paul Simon.

West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D) praised his father-in-law's even-handed political stances in a statement Saturday.

"His insistence on a balanced perspective in his public life, calling himself ‘fervently moderate’, helped us understand it is both possible and preferable to live in a world without partisanship," he said.

Percy's differences with conservative Republicans showed early on as he clashed with Nixon, opposing two successive US Supreme Court nominees – Clement F. Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell. He was the sponsor of a resolution calling for a special prosecutor in the Watergate scandal and became a critic of the Vietnam War.

He rankled the Reagan administration by opposing the nomination of Earnest Lefever as head of the State Department's human rights program. Lefever had said he wanted the job only so he could dismantle the program.

But the former boy wonder business executive who engineered a spectacular turnaround at Bell & Howell Co. was also an apostle of free markets who sought to ease federal regulation of America's corporations. Percy often said that like Dwight D. Eisenhower he was "a conservative on money issues but a liberal on people issues."

He also opposed excessive partisanship, particularly as Foreign Relations Committee chairman.

"I don't want foreign policy developed just by one party and ride roughshod over the other party," he told the Chicago Tribune in 1984. "I'd much more value a bill that has bipartisan support. That's what this committee achieved in World War II, achieved in the Marshall Plan."

Percy made his first foray into electoral politics in 1964 and was beaten for governor by Democratic incumbent Otto Kerner in an election year marked by a Democratic landslide.

Two years later, Percy ran for the Senate and unseated incumbent Democrat Paul H. Douglas, a classic New Deal liberal who had been one of his economics professors at the University of Chicago in the 1930s.

Percy's political problems multiplied in the 1970s.

He was a kindly person who, drawing on his rich baritone voice, voluntarily recorded the entirety of Alexis de Toqueville's "Democracy in America" for use by the blind. But he sometimes lacked the common touch.

He was elected when Illinois was a swing state where he could get votes from some Democrats and liberals. Early in his career he had support from the United Auto Workers and always addressed the Illinois AFL-CIO at campaign time.

But the state gradually became more Democratic.

In 1978, Percy was able to dig out from a deficit in the polls with only weeks until Election Day, going on TV with ads in which he looked into the camera and said: "I got the message." He barely squeaked in.

Six years later he was defeated as some party conservatives deserted him, the liberal Simon highlighted his ties to President Ronald Reagan, and pro-Israel groups incensed by Percy's support of selling AWACS radar planes to Saudi Arabia poured contributions into Simon's campaign.

After his defeat, Percy remained in Washington, where he opened a consulting business, giving advice to clients on the foreign policy issues that had been his main interest in the Senate.

The Monitor's weekly news quiz for Sept. 11-16, 2011