Yesterday’s New York Times featured an interview with retiring South Carolina senator Fritz Hollings, who author David Rosenbaum correctly describes as “the last of a breed once prevalent in Congress: the quick-witted wielder of the folksy metaphor and aphorism.” Some good Hollings lines from the article: Speaking about President Bush's effort to distance himself from the Enron scandal, he suggested the President claim,"I did not have political relations with that man, Ken Lay." And when asked about the durability of his marriage, he had the following reply:"People always wonder how Peatsy [his wife] and I stay together, with so many divorces around us. And a friend of ours used to say, 'It's simple. They have a lot in common. They're both in love with the same fella.'"

Hollings is also the last of another breed: the long-serving moderate-to-liberal Southern Democratic senator. The Palmetto State Democrat was longest serving junior senator in American history (for 36 of his 38 years in office, he was South Carolina’s junior senator, behind Strom Thurmond). Historians should refrain from prognostications, but I think it’s safe to say that it will be a long time before any Southern state re-elects a Democrat six times to the U.S. Senate.

Hollings came to the Senate in 1966 with the reputation as a very conservative Democrat. A former SC governor, he had unsuccessfully challenged the last of the state’s true liberals, Senator Olin Johnston, in the 1962 Democratic primary. Then, after Johnston’s death in 1965 necessitated a special election, he ousted the senator’s replacement, Don Russell, who LBJ described as one of his two favorite Southern governors (along with Carl Sanders of Georgia). Had he not done so, ironically, the seat almost certainly would have fallen into Republican hands. The special election for Johnston’s seat coincided with Strom Thurmond's first bid for reelection as a Republican, and in a year (1966) that was very strongly Republican in congressional elections. Hollings only won 51-49, a margin with which he would eventually become quite familiar.

Hollings sported a very conservative record for his first 10 years or so in the Senate, especially on national security and foreign policy issues. At the same time, however, he distinguished himself with an exceptionally good record on hunger and child poverty issues, one of the few senators to specialize in these questions. He first came to national prominence in 1980, when Jimmy Carter’s appointment of Budget Committee chairman Ed Muskie elevated Hollings, a renowned deficit hawk, to the Budget Committee chairmanship.

As the national Democratic Party moved to the center in the 1980s—and as the Reagan deficits made national Democrats far more sympathetic to Hollings’ budget-cutting preferences—the senator made a bid for President in 1984, but his efforts never received traction. The following year, he joined Phil Gramm and Warren Rudman in co-sponsoring the budget-cutting measure that eventually came to be known as Gramm-Rudman—which prompted Hollings to quip,"If you want a lesson in political anonymity, sponsor a bill with Phil Gramm."

By the late 1980s, with the exception of free trade (he was the Senate’s foremost protectionist), Hollings’ record was indistinguishable from that of most national Democrats. With Republicans assuming majority status in South Carolina, he came under strong challenge in his final two re-election bids, especially since he had pledged previously to retire and had taken to being even more blunt than usual in his public comments. But he was fortunate in his opponents. When his 1992 foe, Congressman Tommy Hartnett, challenged him to take a drug test, the senator shot back,"I'll take a drug test if you take an I.Q. test." As Hartnett wasn’t known for his intellectual acumen, the congressman wisely declined; Hollings squeaked through, 51-49. Then, in 1998, he drew as a foe Congressman Bob Inglis, who some might recall as the smarmily sanctimonious Judiciary Committee member during the Clinton impeachment hearings and trial.

Democrats pressed him to run for reelection in 2004: in retrospect, he was their only chance of holding the seat. But perhaps he was wise to retire, since he might very well have lost, and he therefore was able to go out on top. As Democrats search for a viable candidate for 2008, the Fritz Hollings of the early 1980s would seem ideal. Unfortunately for the party, there aren’t any such figures around.