Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 25, 1994 TAG: 9404260036
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID SARASOHN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Setting up support groups for states whose politicians embarrass them.
We might call it Pol-Anon.
According to reporter Barry Flynn, Virginia is facing a humiliating problem these days. The state is approaching a U.S. Senate race likely to pit Democratic incumbent Charles Robb - with the lively private life - against Republican Oliver North - with the even livelier fantasy life.
And people are laughing at his state.
``Jay Leno is cracking jokes at our expense,'' mourns Flynn. ``Cartoons making fun of Virginia notables are finding their way onto the nation's funny pages.''
To which Oregon can only say: We feel your pain.
Or rather, you're feeling our pain. Because for all of last winter, Oregon appeared in the nation's late-night monologues more often than Bill Clinton's diet. Oregon notables Bob Packwood and Tonya Harding showed up in so many syndicated cartoons that when they appeared on television they looked a little smudged.
So the first thing Oregon has to say to the state that has just succeeded us as the national laughingstock is:
Thank you.
The second is to understand that, according to the Constitution, when things in any state become weird and inexplicable, that state is going to face national ridicule.
Yes, Virginia, there is a sanity clause.
And viewing the state's situation objectively, there are certainly things that might cause some amusement, not to say helpless hysteria.
On the one side is Oliver North, who has admitted lying in his previous dealings with Congress, and now wants to go back and talk some more. He also proudly recites tales of secret talks with Ronald Reagan that the former president says never happened.
When Ronald Reagan says you've got a bad memory, you're really in trouble.
North is challenging Robb, who last month responded to numerous rumors - and research memos compiled by his own staff - by sending out a five-page letter to the state's Democrats conceding behavior ``not appropriate for a married man.'' He denied having had any ``affairs,'' leaving reporters to draw a distinction rarely seen in politics - or in a family newspaper.
Robb assured his readers that he had been forgiven by his wife and by God, although at least one of them has made no public statement.
Back in the '80s, when Robb's political potential seemed endless, the line was that Virginia, the Mother of Presidents, was pregnant again. Today, facing a Chuck Robb-Oliver North Senate campaign, the Mother of Presidents seems to be having morning sickness.
Oregon's counseling to Virginia, of course, is the assurance that she isn't alone. We're all going through this - or at least, more and more of the states are.
And at least Robb did not claim, as Bob Packwood did to a national audience on ``Larry King Live,'' that his behavior with women may have been a little strange, but it was because he had trouble getting dates in high school. Lots of people, after all, had trouble getting dates in high school, but most of them channeled it into behavior that was only moderately annoying - such as becoming writers or editors.
And neither Virginians nor Oregonians have yet suffered the particular embarrassment felt last month by Ohioans. The state's former Democratic governor, Richard Celeste, now working for the Clinton administration and with live hopes for future political possibilities, split from his wife and announced it in a letter to 300 friends and political supporters.
``We are writing,'' confided the letter, ``to share with you personally the decision Dick has reached to separate in our 32nd year of marriage.''
Personally, I liked it better when politicians only wrote to ask for money.
But the Robb and Celeste letters may be the start of a new literary form: the political letter about excruciatingly private issues. This is the next step in our continuing progress of public affairs into personal life, of soap box turning into soap opera.
Politicians write these letters and offer these explanations because the alternative - leaving public office - is inconceivable to them. They have lost the capacity for embarrassment - so residents of their states, watching David Letterman, feel it instead.
So, Virginia, we're all in this together. There's just one other piece of advice that might be useful.
Be very careful if Oliver North ever starts to ice skate.
David Sarasohn is associate editor of The Oregonian, where this first appeared.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB