Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 7, 1994 TAG: 9402080006
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: George F. Will
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
``Heaven forfend!'' say many Virginians about the prospect of North joining the ranks of famous Virginians sent north of the Potomac to serve high in the national government. The dismayed include the Republican senator who would be North's colleague if Virginia Republicans nominate and then the voters elect North.
Sen. John Warner says, in the orotund way some senators speak, that electing someone convicted on three felony counts would be wrong: ``At the very time this nation is struggling against crime, what sort of signal does that send to the younger generations?'' A signal they won't notice, Senator, but never mind.
Warner was speaking for many senators who think North would lower the tone of their institution. Is that possible? Probably. Would he? Probably, but let's be clear about why.
The problem is not just that he lied to Congress, which contains many people who lie to the public. The problem is not what North did but what he is.
His Iran-Contra convictions were overturned because testimony he gave to Congress under a grant of immunity may have influenced his trial. He has admitted that he lied to Congress, altered historical records and destroyed documents. However, what makes North fascinating and dismaying - like a wreck at the side of the road, at which you can't help staring, although it isn't pretty - is less that he often does not tell the truth than that he sometimes seems unable to tell what the truth is.
He has vividly described one-on-one intimacies with President Reagan, although Reagan never met with him one-on-one. He claims to have had a dinner with Israeli General Sharon that Sharon says never happened, and on a day it could not have happened. North tells of a trip he took to Argentina with Secretary of State Alexander Haig, a trip North did not go on. North has said that the late Bill Casey, the CIA director, was like a father to him, and that he, North, visited at Casey's house. Casey's widow, Sophia, says she never saw him. North says he attended Casey's wake ``at the suggestion'' of Mrs. Casey. ``Absolutely untrue,'' she says. For more, see Rachel Wildavsky's compilation of Northisms in last June's Reader's Digest.
It seems that the only way to acquit North of being dishonest is to convict him of being loopy. Whatever, he is terrific on television and in the blather business of direct-mail fund raising.
He announced his candidacy on ``Larry King Live,'' did network morning shows, ``Nightline'' and ``Face the Nation'' - quite a splash for someone trying to become one-hundredth of one half of one of three branches of the national government. On ``Face the Nation,'' he was read a paragraph from one of his fund-raising letters, in which he says ``an arrogant army of ultra-feminists, opposed to traditional family values, has captured the political process.'' Challenged to name even one, North hemmed and hawed and then declared the subject ``irrelevant.'' There will be many such moments between now and the June nominating convention.
Some conservatives want North elected because they like him. Other conservatives want him elected because they dislike the Senate. But some people could want North elected because they dislike conservatism.
Identifying conservatism with this loose cannon on the pitching deck of American politics is a recipe for recurring embarrassments on the right. And it is particularly perverse for Virginia conservatives to contemplate nominating him, considering that his rival for the nomination is the most qualified and intellectually interesting nonincumbent Senate candidate of either party anywhere in the nation this year.
James C. Miller was Reagan's head of the Office of Management of Budget from 1985 on. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Virginia and a shelf full of his published works - seven books, with an eighth due out soon; two monographs; more than 50 scholarly articles (for example, ``Marginal Revenue and Pigouvian Second Degree Price Discrimination'' in ``Metroeconomica''); and a stream of solid journalistic commentary. He knows the nuances of, as well as the large questions about, the federal government. Parsimonious, and skeptical about most federal undertakings, he is the closest thing to a Jeffersonian that the modern age can produce.
Unless Virginia Republicans are, as one newspaper tartly says, so celebrity-struck that if Madonna were living in Virginia and craving a Senate seat they would try to oblige her, Miller will be nominated and the incumbent, Charles Robb, may wind up wishing North had been.
\ Washington Post Writers Group
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB