
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 29, 1991                   TAG: 9103290645
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DOUG WILDER, NATIONAL CANDIDATE

LITTLE more than a year ago, L. Douglas Wilder was inaugurated governor of Virginia. A descendant of slaves, excluded in his youth from the University of Virginia Law School because of his race, Wilder became the chief executive of a state that 35 years earlier had led Southern resistance to school desegregation.

Little more than a year from now, Wilder might be the Democratic nominee for president. He might be seeking to lead a country whose history in many ways has been dominated by the contradiction between pervasive racism and the rights-of-man philosophy on which America was founded.

Were Wilder to win the Democratic nomination - and even more, of course, to win the presidency - it would be an epochal event, and a cause for pride among Virginians. Unfortunately, the prospect of making history fails to quell legitimate doubts about Wilder's qualifications, perhaps the chief of which is his lack of experience.

Those doubts are occasioned by Wednesday's announcement of the creation of a "Wilder for President Exploratory Committee." The committee for now may be "exploratory," giving Wilder room to step back gracefully if need be. But the fact of the committee's organization and registration with the Federal Elections Commission makes Wilder an official candidate.

No one should consider the candidacy frivolous. Wilder is not a frivolous politician. In contrast to Jesse Jackson, heretofore the Democrats' most prominent black campaigner, Wilder is often said to be the moderate, Jackson the ultraliberal. A more accurate contrast might be that Jackson runs to make a point, Wilder to win.

So what does Wilder see about 1992 that the party's reluctant Hamlets - Cuomo, Gore and Gephardt; Bradley, Nunn and Bentsen - do not?

For one thing, he sees a vacuum the vacillators have created. Other than Wilder, only Paul Tsongas, a little-known former U.S. senator from Massachusetts, has stepped forward. George Bush may be likely to carry all 50 states, but the Democrats must nominate somebody.

Wilder's ability to spot the void and seize the moment was central, after all, to his becoming the South's first black lieutenant governor since Reconstruction and subsequently the nation's first black elected governor.

And Wilder sees that early 1991 is not late 1992. President Bush, hailed today for military victory in the Persian Gulf, was thought in deep political trouble only nine months ago. The Middle East scenario is still being played out; America's underlying economic problems have been papered over, not solved, by the war. Who knows what comes next?

And what does Wilder have to lose? For some politicians, too long on the national stage, defeat in '92 could mean defeat forever. For Wilder, his star perhaps still rising, defeat in '92 could polish credentials for '96.

Still, if Wilder's intentions and prospects should not be dismissed, neither should the doubts that persist around his candidacy. The doubts are not minor.

Wilder has displayed strong administrative skills; he and a suspicious legislature (albeit controlled by his own party) seem to have arrived at a workable truce. But his major accomplishment in 15 months as governor has been to hold state operations together in the face of massive revenue shortfalls.

The shortfalls, stemming from missed forecasts during the previous administration and compounded by economic recession, were not of his making. His accomplishment in closing them shouldn't be belittled. But neither does it offer Virginians, let alone Americans in general, sufficient insight into the kind of president Wilder would make.

So far, there are suspicions but little evidence that national ambitions have dictated gubernatorial policies. The tyranny of fiscal circumstance has done most of the dictating. Wilder may be a "fiscal conservative;" he certainly has assiduously projected that image on the national stage. But what else could he be under the circumstances?

And what would Wilder do in more robust times? For that matter, what will he do if hard times linger? Not until the 1992 General Assembly will he present the first biennial state budget of his own administration's making; what will that tell us about him?

For Wilder, acquiring name recognition and national attention apparently is no problem. But 15 months in the governorship affords not enough time to judge a potential president. By 1996, the picture will be fuller.

Keywords:
POLITICS

by CNB