Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 14, 1995 TAG: 9509140045
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-14 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In the wake of Bob Packwood's announced resignation, Warner is ascending to the chairmanship of the Senate Rules Committee. (Packwood had been chairman of Senate Finance, but his departure created a domino effect, shifting chairmanships and bumping Warner and other Republicans up the seniority ladder.)
The new appointment may not mean much to rigid-right party activists who yearn to dump Warner. His high crimes: principled refusal to support Oliver North's unsuccessful Senate bid last year, and his snub in 1993 of Michael Farris, the GOP candidate for lieutenant governor.
Still, it's been almost 30 years since a Virginian chaired a Senate panel. The last was A. Willis Robertson, chairman of Senate Banking from 1959 to 1966.
And most Virginians likely will be pleased that their three-term senator is gaining in leadership responsibility. Despite the GOP's internecine squabbles, opinion polls suggest Warner remains popular with moderate Republicans and with many Democrats and independents.
It's not that Warner has been uninfluential in the Senate until now. On the contrary, his views have carried weight on numerous matters, especially relating to the military.
The committee he'll now head, actually the Committee on Rules and Administration, is not one of the Senate's real power panels. But it does have jurisdiction over such matters as federal election laws, voter registration and Senate administration.
This latter role is the one Warner highlighted Tuesday upon his election by fellow Republicans to the chairmanship. Noting that his committee will see to implementation of the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995, he said, ``I intend to emphasize the need for Congress to place the same requirements on itself that it imposes on business and the American people.'' He also said he'll continue efforts to put the Senate ``on the cutting edge of technology'' and to streamline congressional operations.
Sounds fine. Few will argue with these goals.
But most Virginians and most Americans, polls show, are less concerned with gee-whiz technological capabilities of Congress than they are with the question of campaign-finance reform, which now falls into Warner's bailiwick.
Warner, ahem, has not been exactly a champion of cleaning up big money's influence on politics. But give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he didn't like the way the t's were crossed and the i's dotted in reform bills he's opposed in the past.
Now he has an unprecedented chance to help shape reasonable campaign-finance reform in the public interest.
What say, Mr. Chairman?
by CNB