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

DATE: SATURDAY, March 26, 1994                   TAG: 9403280141
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BRIEFLY PUT . . .

FIVE YEARS AGO, the only subject about which Republican Marshall Coleman and Democrat Douglas Wilder agreed was the governor's job. They both wanted it. (Wilder got it.)

This year, the old political foes agree on two subjects: Democrat Chuck Robb and Republican Ollie North. Neither, say Coleman and Wilder, is a good choice for the U.S. Senate.

Coleman, it seems, is worried about Virginia's health. If Robb and North are the nominees, he says "Virginians have a choice between either cancer or a heart attack."

Wilder is worried about Virginia's image. "It's troubling," he says, "to see the state being laughed and joked at as if we are backward people. We don't deserve that."

No one deserves either cancer or a heart attack, of course. But people do deserve the government they elect, notwithstanding the less-than-disinterested advice of two pols in a pique.

HISTORY GOES 'round. Twelve years ago, when Chuck Robb was governor, he spent much of one year searching for a Democrat to anoint for the Senate after his first choice, Owen Pickett, dropped out under threat that Wilder might run (yes, that year, too) as an independent.

Robb's talent search was marked by fumbles and sparked many a joke. One was that he had a bumper sticker on his limousine reading: "Honk if you want to be senator."

One fellow who honked back then was state Sen. Virgil Goode of Rocky Mount. Robb bypassed Goode in favor of Lt. Gov. Dick Davis. Now Goode wants to bypass Robb. And hanging over both remains the eternal question - what will Wilder do?

Ah, the poignancy of politics.

by CNB