How can a former North Carolina senator help us understand the surprising recent upsurge in the strength of several presidential candidates?

You might think the former senator I have in mind is presidential candidate John Edwards. No, it's the example of Jesse Helms who might give us that help. Last week, a long-time Helms supporter showed me the connection.

"What is the common thread," he asked, "that runs through Obama, Huckabee and McCain -- and might be missing in the others? It is a thread that ran through Jesse Helms, too."

I had to think about it for a minute. "It's not just the 'change' thing," I said. "All the candidates are talking about change. And Jesse surely was never much for change."

"No," he agreed, "it is not change. There is something about each of them that comes across as genuine and believable. I support Huckabee, in large part because of his views on issues, some things that he and I and maybe Senator Helms would all agree about, and things that the mainline Republican establishment might not like. But I am not talking about issues. Huckabee projects something that goes beyond the issues, something that makes me think he is comfortable with himself, and would be comfortable with me, whether or not we saw political issues the same way."

"What about Obama?" I asked.

"I don't agree with Obama," he said. "But I believe that he is real. When he talks, I feel like he is including me even if I don't agree with him. He is the kind of guy I could go to with a problem. And I would get a warm reception. The same with McCain. He is not my candidate, but I trust him to be himself."

"All this makes sense," I said. "But what does Jesse Helms have to do with it? He was mean-spirited, confrontational and divisive."

"I think there is something about Jesse that you don't understand. On political issues, yes, he was a fighter. I will grant you that. But when it came to helping people and projecting helpfulness, he was something else. And when you saw him in action, even at his feistiest, you thought you knew that you were seeing the real Jesse. It was genuine, and he came across as genuine. And lots of people who didn't agree with Jesse's issues or his way of dealing with them still liked him because they thought that Jesse Helms was real. Without that quality, Jesse might not have been elected to the U.S. Senate four times. It is a quality that Obama, Huckabee and McCain share with Helms. That quality gives them an edge over their competitors."

Certainly there is a "common thread" that is an appealing part of the personality and character of Obama, Huckabee and McCain. But I will have to think about whether it was also an important part of Jesse Helms' appeal to voters.

I will keep this question in mind as I read a new biography of Helms ("Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern Conservatism" by William Link). In the introduction, Link gives a glimpse of Helms' human qualities that sometimes won the admiration even of opponents. Link tells how former senator and star basketball player Bill Bradley felt after he shot baskets with Helms' granddaughter, at Helms' request. Watching a "beaming" Helms on the sidelines, Bradley said it was a lesson for him: Bradley "found it difficult to regard Helms as 'the personification of evil.' Rather, he saw him as a grandfather, a person, something other than a 'cardboard cutout.'"