Jesse Helms was both a bane and a boon to Presidents for thirty years, championing such core conservative causes as low taxes, anticommunism, and school prayer. Here he has chronicled the inside story of his rise to power and all those who defended or fought him, from Nixon and Reagan to Kennedy and Clinton. From a time when conservatives in the Senate "could have met comfortably in a phone booth" to the consolidation of conservative power in every branch of the federal government, Jesse Helms was a mover, shaker, and lightning rod on issues ranging from the Panama Canal to race relations to Roe v. Wade to Iran-Contra. This book is also a series of portraits of people he befriended and, at times, beat back; the events of the recent past that shook and shaped America are recounted as he experienced them, including the Kennedy assassination, the Watergate hearings, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the Clinton impeachment.--From publisher description.