ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, April 14, 1997 TAG: 9704140130
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: GEORGE WILL
SOURCE: GEORGE WILL
THE STATE south of Oklahoma City, which is known here as Baja Oklahoma, and elsewhere as Texas, has a Republican governor, George W. Bush, who is a potential presidential candidate. Oklahoma has one, too.
Frank Keating, 53, acquired national attention by the grace he showed under the pressure of the April 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. What has held the attention of some Republicans looking for a candidate is his synthesis of the two sometimes divergent strains of Republicanism, one stressing economic growth, the other social conservatism.
Growth is a near obsession in this state with harsh memories of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and the oil bust of the 1980s. Social conservatism is not optional in a state where 30 percent of the people say they go to church more than once a week. Keating, a tax-cutting, tort-reforming, right-to-life Catholic, has presided over a 34 percent decline in AFDC case loads, and can boast of a 3.7 percent unemployment rate as he prepares to seek a second term next year.
He might today be just a circuit judge if Democratic senators had not blocked his nomination (by President Bush) on the grounds that he was too conservative. (He was supported by Coretta Scott King, who remembered that he had been state counsel of the NAACP and the only Republican in the state legislature to support a state Martin Luther King holiday.) He and Bill Clinton were undergraduate politicians at the same time in different classes at Georgetown University. He was an FBI agent and then a senior official in Reagan's Treasury and Justice departments and Bush's HUD.
After a brief stint in a large Washington law firm, he decided to go home to try ``to make Oklahoma rich.'' At his first political appearance, he was mistaken for the caterer. Soon he was governor.
Oklahoma, today one of the most conservative states, has a history of radicalism. Its constitution, produced when populism ruled the prairies, is so amendable that it is the longest of any state. In 1912, Eugene Debs, the socialist presidential candidate, got his highest percentage in Oklahoma. But now, both U.S. senators and all six representatives are Republicans.
Dealing with a legislature that is two-thirds Democratic, Keating has capped the growth of property taxes, and enacted the largest tax cut in state history and tort reform that caps punitive damages at two times actual damages. Not one of his 109 vetoes in his first two years was overridden.
What quickens the interest of social conservatives is the combination of passion and good cheer he brings to what he is comfortable calling ``issues of the soul'' and ``righteous living.'' It is not easy to smile while saying ``Golding was right,'' when what you mean is that William Golding's novel ``Lord of the Flies'' was right about unparented young males becoming predatory.
When he addressed the high school students of Duncan, Okla., a girl seven months pregnant rose to ask his opinion of teen pregnancy. He is nearsighted and did not see her condition or understand the tittering of the assembly. He explained why he thought it immoral and wrong. When he recognized her condition, he went on to say why she should give up the baby for adoption and get control of her life. He received an ovation from the students. Clearly if, say, the Christian Coalition, 1.5 million strong, is in (if the coalition will forgive the expression) a gambling mood and wants to try to be a kingmaker by backing a candidate early in the nomination process, Keating probably will be on its short list.
In 2000, for the first time since 1940, there will be no clear front-runner for the Republican nomination, and many Republicans, still smarting from the Dole-Kemp experience, will be disinclined to run a Washingtonian against (presumptively) Gore or Gephardt. Suppose three candidates (Quayle because of what can be called a sympathy vote, which is already sufficient to have him ahead in early polls, for whatever they are worth; Kemp because some Republicans are slow learners; Bush because he will have cachet and a Texas-size pile of cash) start with 50 percent of the primary vote, combined. That does not leave much room for any of the other half dozen or more potential candidates to build on.
On the other hand, that may be the sort of fractionated field in which a few determined factions can actually make a king.
WASHINGTON POST WRITERS GROUP
LENGTH: Medium: 82 linesby CNB