ERNEST HEMINGWAY once had a Rolls-Royce, but he got rid of it because people kept kicking the tires and saying, "they don't make 'em like that any more."
Well, as shopworn as the old adage may be, these are the only words that adequately describe the remarkable man who died last Thursday in Washington: They don't make'em like Bill Fulbright anymore.
It was my good fortune to come to know J. William Fulbright in the last decade of his long life, and to cherish many hours of quiet conversation with him about the history-shaping events of our times in which he was so often a leading player. His great achievements as a public man have been abundantly and deservedly celebrated in these past few days, so on this sad occasion I will only relate a few of those informal moments.
A favorite topic of those conversations, needless to say, was the Fulbright fellowships for international study, which his legislation created in 1946. He relished telling how, as a young senator from Arkansas, he used parliamentary guile to maneuver the program through a recalcitrant U.S. Senate. The biggest problem, he said, was to get the legislation past senators "who were so conservative that they didn't want anything to happen for the first time."
Another memorable tale dealt with a famous clash with Harry Truman. In the 1946 elections the Republicans captured control of Congress, leaving the Democratic president in an unenviable position of having to submit his liberal programs to very conservative lawmakers. On the day after the election, Fulbright was ruminating with colleagues about the gloomy political outlook, and he tossed out a radical scenario: The Republican leadership in Congress could designate an individual of their choosing for secretary of state; Truman would appoint that person, then resign, and the designated individual would then become president under the order of succession at the time.
Fulbright, a zealous advocate of the parliamentary form of government, was merely indulging in rhetorical speculation, but his proposal reached a reporter and quickly became front-page news. The crusty Truman was not amused at the insubordination of this upstart Rhodes Scholar; he retorted that Fulbright was "an over-educated Oxford S.O.B."
Ultimately, Truman carried the day by winning re-election in 1948, but he still nursed a grudge. In the waning months of his presidency, Truman sent a "personal and confidential" memorandum to Secretary of State Dean Acheson urging that the State Department, which administered the Fulbright scholarships, change the name to "State Department scholarships." Acheson, an admirer of Fulbright, quietly disregarded the lame-duck instruction. Many years later Fulbright's friends negotiated to get the original of Truman's testy memorandum to present to the senator as a cherished memento.
In the early 1950s, Fulbright was the first -- and for a time the only -- senator to take on the bully Joe McCarthy, who was just beginning his red-baiting activities. The vituperative senator from Wisconsin responded by calling his colleague "Senator Halfbright." But on that struggle, history has rendered its verdict. Alone among United States senators, the names of Fulbright and McCarthy have entered the dictionary as common nouns: "Fulbright" describes a scholar; "McCarthyite" defines a politician who deals in reckless and unfounded accusation.
In the 1950s Fulbright, on a routine official visit to Russia, attended a ballet performance at the Bolshoi. He was deeply impressed, and came home secretly ashamed that such an impoverished and backward nation as Russia could sustain such an exquisite cultural institution while our own nation, the richest in the world, had nothing comparable. So he introduced legislation to create the National Center for the Performing Arts, later to become the Kennedy Center. A few years ago, in belated tribute, a bust of Fulbright was placed in the lobby of the Kennedy Center. At the unveiling, Fulbright said with his impish twinkle, "As ugly as I am, I think it's beautiful."
Two years ago his friends, aware that his health was failing, put on a little dinner in observance of his 88th birthday. The high point of the evening came when Anna Moffo -- the great opera singer and one of the more than 200,000 Fulbright scholars -- provided the entertainment. After singing a few arias of Puccini and the like, she pulled her chair up close to Fulbright's, put her arm around him and crooned an adoring rendition of "My Bill," ending the performance by planting a huge kiss on his old bald head.
The lipstick was still there when, a little later, he accepted the nation's highest civilian award, the Medal of Freedom, from a young protege from Arkansas whom Fulbright had given his first job 25 years earlier.
The young man was, of course, Bill Clinton.
Ray Jenkins is the former editor of The Evening Sun's editorial page.