Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 17, 1993 TAG: 9305170046
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
So what is it about Oliver North, someone asked former Virginia Republican Chairman Don Huffman, that has party activists clamoring to nominate the key figure in the Iran-Contra affair for the U.S. Senate next year?
"Have you heard him speak?" Huffman asked in reply. "Then you'll know."
Lots of Virginians are getting a chance to hear North speak these days.
North - the former National Security Council aide who was convicted of three counts stemming from the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages deal that rocked the Reagan administration, convictions later set aside or overturned on appeal - is busily traveling the state, drumming up support for a Senate bid against Democrat Charles Robb in 1994.
What they're hearing is the same kind of God, motherhood and flag speech that riveted the nation during North's 1987 testimony before Congress and transformed him overnight into a folk hero of the political right.
It's not so much the content of North's talk that excites Republicans - they've heard these same conservative homilies about a strong defense, lower taxes and "traditional family values" many times before.
It's the delivery - and the deliverer.
North has much the same stage presence, the knack for knowing when to pause, when to look a listener straight in the eyes, when to drive home a point with inflection, as Ronald Reagan - a Republican icon whose name North drops to party faithful at every opportunity.
"He's such an inspiring speaker," said Kathy Hayden, a key Republican worker from Vinton. "People think of him as a hero. Someone to look up to."
North calls this talent for public speaking a "gift" from God.
"I'm not a politician," he told a crowd of 300-plus people who gathered to hear North speak at a $10-per-person Republican fund-raiser Saturday night at Cave Spring High School. "I'm a simple infantry officer."
But, in an interview afterward, North said he believes the same skills that allowed him to climb through the Army ranks to lieutenant colonel would make him a good politician, as well.
"The skills and the gifts the good Lord gave me that made me a very effective infantry officer are in many ways reflected in Ronald Reagan's ability to motivate people, to pull them together to do difficult things," North said. "And if you consider that combat is one of the most difficult things you can ever try to motivate people for and get them to participate in, then politics ought to be a little bit easier."
Perhaps so, at least in the public aspects of the job. But what kind of senator would North be when it came to the parts of the job that don't attract the spotlight? The drudgery of committee work, for instance? The back-room give-and-take on legislation?
North flashed his trademark gap-toothed smile. "I had the inner workings of Congress beat into me for six full days up there," he said. "I've got the stripes on my back to show for it and they'll never forgive me for it."
So how would a Sen. Oliver North, R-Va., relate to his colleagues then?
North grinned again. "I'd have a difficult time calling Ted Kennedy `dear colleague,'" he said.
Suffice it to say that North - glib, charming, quick with a one-liner - is already a master of the politician's art of deflecting questions that don't play to his strengths, or detract from his message.
Take the kind of technical, local issues that a prospective Senate candidate might have to confront.
For instance, how does North feel about the Clinton administration's plan to spend $224 million on smart-highway technology? Is Western Virginia wise to position itself as a recipient of such federal funding?
North doesn't even touch a question like that, not yet anyway. "One of the things I'm trying to do is to learn more as I travel around the state. I try to educate myself about both local issues and state issues as well as national issues. . . . My grandmother always told me you learn more by listening than by talking, so I'm trying to do a lot of listening."
Instead, what North prefers to talk about - and what Republican activists are far more interested in hearing - are the broad strokes of national social, economic and defense policy.
North always prompts howls of laughter when he ridicules Congress as dominated by "permanent, professional, political potentates of pork."
He packages both law-and-order and congressional term limits in the same sound-bite. "The real crime is term limits. The average length of a term for a convicted murderer is six years. The average length of term for a member of Congress is 14 years. We have it all backwards."
And he lambasts President Clinton's proposal to allow gays to serve openly in the military. "How can we provide for the common defense if we have a commander-in-chief committed to turning the American armed forces into a laboratory for a radical social experiment?"
North also routinely gets in some sharp verbal digs against those he disagrees with.
The Vietnamese official who recently squired him around Hanoi isn't merely a Communist, he's "the little commie who was taking us around."
Then there's the obligatory riposte against "the media elite," specifically "the Nasty Broadcasting Company, the New York Crimes, the Washington Com-Post" and even "the Readers Disgust." Those are references that typically draw fevered applause from North's conservative listeners.
North's appeal is so strong that many Republicans believe his nomination next year is already a foregone conclusion.
According to a recent Mason-Dixon Poll, some 61 percent of Virginia Republicans want him to be their Senate candidate.
Jim Miller, the former Reagan administration budget director, drew only 12 percent. And the most recent entry, Jay Stephens - the former federal prosecutor in Washington noted for his case against ex-Mayor Marion Barry and his investigation into Rep. Dan Rostenkowski - didn't even register in the poll.
"Every place I go, the majority of party regulars are extremely excited" about the prospect of a North candidacy, said Blaine Grim, a Republican leader who came all the way from Harrisonburg to hear North talk Saturday. "Name I.D. is one thing. Another is the Iran-Contra escapade. He came out of that as someone who was able to get one up on Congress. Congress has the esteem of a used-car salesman."
Didn't North lie to Congress? He was, after all, convicted of aiding in the obstruction of Congress - along with destroying national security documents and accepting an illegal gratuity as part of the scheme that sent American weapons to Iran for cash that wound up funding the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
"I don't know whether he lied or not," Grim said. "I think the perception is he took the fall for somebody else and he did it because he loved his country. And also, they believe he's eminently qualified. He has personality and charisma. You put all that together and you have someone who can run against Chuck Robb or Doug Wilder and win.
"The nomination is not locked up for anyone. But he's got about 10 to 20 legs up on anybody else."
Keywords:
POLITICS
Memo: ***CORRECTION***