Senator Lloyd Bentsen, who has died at the age of 85, was an influential political figure in his native Texas and later at national level. But he was remembered by most Americans for a single outburst during the dismal presidential campaign of 1988.
The Republican vice-presidential candidate, Senator Dan Quayle, brashly claimed during a televised debate that his own political experience was equal to that of John Kennedy when the assassinated president first ran for the White House. Like many viewers, Bentsen, the Democrats' vice-presidential choice, was outraged. "Senator," he rumbled, "I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy." It was hardly Ciceronian rhetoric, but it nicely captured the widespread public distaste that this insignificant Indiana politico should compare himself with the martyred national hero.
Bentsen had been chosen by the Democrats to add gravitas to Michael Dukakis's forlorn presidential bid. In part it was no more than the customary American effort to balance the party ticket. Dukakis was a young Massachusetts liberal, Bentsen a grizzled conservative who had dominated Texas politics for 20 years. But he was also chosen because it was assumed he would deliver his state's crucial 29 electoral college votes.
In fact, even his legendary clout in the state proved inadequate: Texas went Republican, as did 40 other states. Dukakis's campaigning inadequacies and George Bush Sr's abysmal smear tactics ensured that President Ronald Reagan was followed by another Republican administration. There was, however, one strange personal tribute to Bentsen. A so-called "faithless voter", an electoral college member from West Virginia, flouted all the institution's conventions to back Bentsen for the presidency.
That curious episode seemed to mark the end of Bentsen's long political career - until President Bill Clinton selected him in 1993 for the critical cabinet post of Treasury Secretary. The president based his choice on Bentsen's seven-year record as chairman of the Senate finance committee. Clinton had beaten President Bush Sr mainly because of an unexpectedly large popular vote attracted by the oddball third candidate, businessman Ross Perot, who had focused his eccentric campaign on the budget issue.
Within days of taking office, Clinton learned that the final figures from the Government Accounting Office showed that a projected $375bn deficit would actually soar to nearly $700bn. It put him under pressure to postpone the fiscal programmes for which he had campaigned, and he was in sore need of Bentsen's renowned Congressional skills to get this controversial budget passed.
Throughout his Senate career Bentsen had denounced the deficits run up by successive administrations and it was clear by 1993 that the moment of reckoning had come. The details of the necessary cutbacks fell to Bentsen and he was embroiled in ferocious battles with his cabinet colleagues. The package pleased no one, least of all key Democrat members of Congress. In the end - after Herculean efforts by Bentsen against continuing sniping from cabinet colleagues - the budget scraped through by a single vote in each chamber of Congress. The political price was cataclysmic: in the 1994 mid-term elections, Republicans swept the board. The 51 seats they gained in the House of Representatives gave them control of all its committees for the first time in 40 years. In the Senate they won nine seats to secure a majority of 53-47. At 73, Bentsen decided he had had enough and, six weeks after this political earthquake, announced his retirement.
Descended from immigrant Danish farmers, he had not, like so many of his contemporaries, been scarred by the Depression. In 1918 his father returned from military service to swap the grim rigours of South Dakota for the fertile Rio Grande valley in Texas. Hidalgo County mostly comprised undeveloped farmland and, by the time Lloyd Bentsen was born, his family was prospering from its cotton and citrus production. By 1948 the county grew more cotton than any other in the US and its citrus industry was earning $100m a year.
As the area's largest land developers, the Bentsen family was involved in constant legal disputes, so it was hardly surprising that they put their son through law school. He graduated from the University of Texas just as America joined the second world war. His initial army service was in intelligence but he later trained as a pilot, flying Liberator bombers against heavily defended fuel dumps in southern Europe. At 23 he was promoted to major and given command of a squadron. After leading it for 35 raids, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery.
When he returned to Texas he decided to immerse himself in politics, first as a county judge and later as a Congressman. By 1954, he wanted to make some money. His father had by then branched out into financial services in Houston, and Bentsen became the company's chief executive. He stayed for 16 years, gaining a wide range of contacts throughout Texas. Then politics called again. In 1970 he sold the business for $22m and beat George Bush Sr for one of the two Texas seats in the US Senate. When he won the seat again in 1976 it encouraged him to enter the Democratic presidential primaries. He attracted such derisory support that he returned chastened to the Senate.
Attaining the chairmanship of the finance committee in 1987, he built a solid legislative record on such social issues as pension protection, health care for the poor and banking reform. In spite of his reputed conservatism, he also gave strong support to the bill which ceded US control of the Panama Canal, to that establishing the North American Free Trade Area, and to measures aiming to bring tighter controls over the millions of firearms in private ownership.
He is survived by his wife Beryl Ann, two sons and a daughter.
· Lloyd Millard Bentsen Jr, politician, born February 11 1921; died May 23 2006