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

DATE: TUESDAY, June 7, 1994                   TAG: 9406070077
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

OLIVER NORTH, REPUBLICAN

TYPICALLY, criminality works against a politician. But Oliver North has used his to build a personal fortune and respectful following. Had he not worked to subvert constitutional government, had he not publicly noted his crimes without remorse (though later winning acquittals on a technicality), North today would be an unknown.

On this rock of criminality North has built not only a following and wealth, but now also political accomplishment. In defeating economist and former Reagan official James Miller for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, North has moved from marginal figure to standard-bearer of one of Virginia's two major parties.

For this embarrassing turn of affairs, much of the party's establishment has itself partly to blame. In seeking the nomination, North found support not only among religious-right insurgents but also among some party regulars who supported him on the grand and enduring principle that he's a heckuva fund-raiser. Which is to say, he bought them.

Even so, some Republicans have been bothered. Sen. John Warner has called North unfit to hold office. Former Attorney General Marshall Coleman is considering an independent campaign.

In the woolly politics of 1994, perhaps he could win. Former Democratic Gov. Douglas Wilder is also considering an independent candidacy. If so, along with Coleman and the Democratic nominee to be chosen in the June 14 primary, it could be a four-candidate race.

The danger is that such a contest would improve North's chances to win an election he ordinarily never could. North isn't likely to add much to the support he already has; it isn't that Virginians don't yet know him, but that they know him too well. But neither is North apt to lose any followers; if what is known about him hasn't turned them off by now, what could? In a multicandidate race, less than 30 percent of the vote could be enough to win.

Such dynamics point to a central virtue of America's two-party system - its tendency toward moderation. Typically, extremely polarizing nominees like North lose badly in two-way general elections; the desire to win tugs the party that nominated such a candidate back toward the center; control of the party reverts to more levelheaded leaders.

The dilemma for anti-North Republicans is whether to let this sort of evolution occur, losing a prime opportunity to win a Senate seat but strengthening the party and the two-party system in the long run, or to actively oppose North with an independent candidate of their own. In multicandidate races, securing a base can take priority over appealing to the middle.

To be sure, many of North's backers are concerned about slippage in American political standards; for them, North's us-vs.-them rhetoric against "insiders," "the Washington elite" and "the media" provides answers.

They're right to worry about declining standards and values. The irony, however, is that North's crimes were insider crimes. In his contempt for truth-telling and his working of the system to stay the hand of justice, he took to new depths the insider behavior against which he rails. In converting his behavior to politically potent celebrity status, his cynicism trumps the cynics.

North is not the answer to the decline of values in America. He is an example of it.

Keywords:
POLITICS

by CNB