Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 10, 1993 TAG: 9401140007
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Paxton Davis
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Public life is not likely to be improved by the victories of any of the candidates in either race, and the quality of what is sometimes called "democracy" probably will decline. But the gaudy show Virginia politicians put on will, no doubt, provide endless entertainment for those who care less for good government than they do for buffoonery in high places.
The boundless wisdom of the Virginia General Assembly - whose members know, if nothing else, how to protect their backsides - guarantees that campaigns for state as well as federal office will be more or less continuous. We have them annually, spaced to spare nervous gubernatorial and legislative candidates the embarrassment of having to run alongside their more controversial national counterparts, and the result is a condition of endless confusion. Who is running for what?
It rarely matters much, American government today having reached new lows of self-interest at all levels, but the sport of the effort to gain or hold public office still gives us, thanks especially to television, spectacular reminders that the vanity of human aspiration is endless and depthless and that high office provides us, year in, year out, not the best and the brightest but the worst and the dumbest.
This brings us without further fuss to the 1993 gubernatorial race, which after a few coughs and rumblings now enters its definitive phase.
The redoubtable Mary Sue Terry, formerly a state delegate and only recently twice attorney general of Virginia, wages the crusade on behalf of the Democrats, upon whose mercies her fate surely depends. Her qualification for office is mostly her desire to hold it, and she is surely promising achievements she cannot deliver without firm legislative support - ridding the schools of handguns, for example. But she is earnest, focused and visibly consumed by her ambition to become Virginia's first woman governor, and she would be a formidable candidate if diligence were the test.
But the test ought to be brains, imagination and moral courage, and Terry's famous caution may already have suggested to many voters that she fails it, as her declining polls - she started with a commanding lead - may indicate. And her attacks on the Clinton administration will hardly endear her to many Democrats whom she will need to win.
Her greatest asset remains her Republican rival, former delegate and erstwhile congressman George Allen. His vacant smile and random campaign, which has no thematic focus beyond Allen's professed adherence to the canons of GOP "conservatism," and which has blundered time and again by seeming to appeal to racial and religious bigotry, do not invite confidence. His running mate for lieutenant governor is a scary "Christian" right-winger. Allen reminds one, in fact, of the old Hollywood joke: "An empty car drove up and Louis B. Mayer got out."
Dismal experience suggests, however, that neither lack of political conviction nor an empty head is a serious impediment to electoral success. Now running neck and neck, neither Terry nor Allen enjoys a clear run at the governor's mansion.
But their race is, in truth, only a preliminary to next year's campaign for the seat in the United States Senate now held by Charles S. Robb. Incumbency is generally regarded as good political insurance, but Robb's troubles and scandals have been so many that his re-election is far from secure.
Threatened to his right by Oliver North, the convicted but spared felon and Reagan cowboy now all but certain to seek - and win - the GOP nomination, Robb faces to his left his bitter enemy Gov. Douglas Wilder, who vows to unseat him.
Wilder, who will challenge Robb for the Democratic nomination, does not preclude running as an independent, or perhaps, if he loses the former, of doing the latter as well, and his candidacy suggests that he would divide Robb's vote definitively either way.
Election of North is a possibility few decent people want even to think about, but it is now not only a possibility but a probability, and Robb and Wilder can blame no one for it but themselves and their mutual hatred.
\ Paxton Davis is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
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