THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, November 5, 1994 TAG: 9411050618
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A9 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: Long : 140 lines
As the race for a Virginia Senate seat comes down to the wire, writers continue to weigh in on it, discussing everything from media bias to the role of religion in the race.
Mary Jacob in Roll Call (Nov. 1) reports that Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.) so abhors the idea of sitting next to Ollie North in the Senate next year that he's been raising money for incumbent Democratic Sen. Chuck Robb. It's the first time in 14 years he's picked up the phone to help another candidate.
``North was the motivation,'' Bumpers said in an interview this month. ``Chuck Robb came up and asked for my help, so I made a few calls.''
Columnist Robert Reno says, ``If somebody wrote a script for a movie based on a retired Marine who raised ordinary simple-mindedness to the status of patriotic virtue and who comes dangerously close to moving into the U.S. Senate, they'd be lucky to get it read by the Hollywood moguls who buy this sort of rubbish.'' But if it was filmed, ``who in all Hollywood could give a glibber, smoother performance than North, a breathing, walking, personification of method acting at its most excruciating and idiotic? Nancy Reagan's brittle performance in a walk-on role, in which she calls the hero a liar, has a tinny sound. And she used to be a professional starlet.''
Simon Heffer of the Daily Telegraph, in London, (Nov. 2) thinks a genuine battle of ideas is at stake in the contest between Robb and North, but is being obscured by the candidates themselves. ``In their cynicism and unparalleled vulgarity, the competitors in these elections . . . contrive to make the matter at issue one of personalities rather than policies.''
But Heffer thinks ``the people of Virginia, always broadly Republican, have become in many cases extreme conservatives. They could want no one better to represent their militant tendencies than North.'' And he believes there is a real message in the preference so many feel for the Republican.
``American voters are sufficiently sophisticated to understand what expanding the size and role of the state means; and, for the most part, they do not like it. They do not like paying more taxes, such as Mr. Robb keeps voting for. They do not like all the new government programmes that these taxes are used to fund, since they believe, with some justification, that they are mainly for the benefit of the undeserving poor.''
Paul Galloway of the Chicago Tribune (Nov. 2) visited the state and discovered James Davison Hunter, a University of Virginia professor of religion and sociology who believes the Robb/North clash is not a mere political contest but a culture war.
``Culture wars are inherently undemocratic. In a democracy the people you disagree with are called opponents. But in a culture war they're defined as enemies and are denied the legitimacy of citizenship. That's what North was saying when he said Clinton was not his commander-in-chief. Enemies are beyond the pale, wicked, evil.''
According to Hunter, ``the nation is facing its greatest challenge since the Civil War. Culture wars always precede a shooting war; they provide a reason for violence.''
Scripps Howard columnist Leonard Larsen (Nov. 2) thinks that if North wins ``it will be a victory he'll share with media reporters and editors who can't learn that piling on has penalties.'' Larsen thinks the bias is obvious. ``Reporters working North's campaign seem to approach the assignment as an obligation to trap North in another lie or make him admit his previous lies or provoke him into some unguarded craziness. The media, for the most part, is reporting its mainstream political prejudices, not the North campaign.''
Argus Hamilton in a quip reported in the Daily Oklahoman (Nov. 2) says: ``The Rev. Pat Robertson said he is recruiting 70,000 Christians to campaign for Oliver North in Virginia. Sen. Charles Robb met the challenge. He's mobilized the Lions Club to eat them alive.''
Syndicated columnist Carl Rowan (Nov. 2) warns against a North victory. ``In Virginia, all blacks but those who played too much football while wearing dunce caps for helmets know that Ollie North is an extraordinarily dangerous politician. He even scares conservative Republicans.'' And Rowan goes on to claim that North's remarks about the District of Columbia and ``other racial issues show that this former Marine has a bigoted, neo-Nazi mentality.'' That means to Rowan that ``black voters in Virginia have a solemn duty to vote for Sen. Chuck Robb and deny North a bomb-thrower seat in the U.S. Senate.''
An editorial in the San Diego Union-Tribune took note of Nancy Reagan's recent remarks about North. ``Three cheers for Nancy Reagan, who said about Oliver North what too many Republicans have been conveniently overlooking during the ugly Senate race in Virginia: North is a congenital liar.''
The Union says you don't have to like Robb to know ``North is unfit for the Senate. You just have to look at his record or listen to anybody who worked with him or near him in the Reagan administration. . . . ''
The paper also concludes that ``North's campaign has been odious. . . . He has made God, the Confederate flag and abortion into issues in the Virginia race. Are those really the subjects most on the minds of Virginians and Americans?'' The Union-Tribune says the country has major social and economic problems and is sick of partisanship and gridlock. ``We can do better than elect a liar and a felon.''
In their final issues before election day, both Newsweek and Time took note of the Virginia Senate race. In fact, Newsweek (Nov. 7) put North on the cover and published a long article about the candidate by Howard Fineman.
``Two centuries ago Virginians showed a knack for sending leaders to save a nation. Next week they will decide where to send North.'' Fineman thinks ``North has the edge. Tribalistic and vaguely messianic, estranged from traditional party ties, geared for zealotry rather than broad appeal, his high-tech, lavishly financed campaign is built for a sulphurous atmosphere - which is to say, the future.''
Fineman quotes a Republican pollster who says North is ``the handy voice of talk-show anger.'' And he describes a campaign in which none of the above may be the most popular choice. ``Many Democrats despise Robb, a Senate cipher known for hanging with beach bimbos and for a conspiracy - mounted by his lieutenants - to tap the phones of Douglas Wilder. . . . Many Republicans despise North for inflated claims of derring-do and for lying to Congress about Iran-Contra.''
Fineman traces the roots of the North campaign to Jesse Helms who ``wanted to build an independent, culturally conservative force in the South that would not have to truck with President Richard Nixon, whom Helms regarded as a vacillating tool of communists and liberals.'' The result was the New Right, and Fineman says ``allies and disciples of the New Right founders comprise the North high command and on-board entourage,'' including Helms direct mail guru Richard Viguerie, an advertising man who went to school at Helms' NCPAC, and a top campaign aide who was an adviser to Pat Robertson.
Fineman says North's strength comes from three sources, ``the macho Clancy Crowd,'' military, retired military and their hangers on; ``the Blue Blazers, the young men at conservative Virginia colleges who came of age watching and admiring young North;'' and ``conservative churchgoers, most of them women.''
And he describes the candidate as crusading not against Robb but against the president. ``To North, it's the Nicaraguan struggle all over again, this time in America. Ollie's troops are the Contras, the Clintonites are the Sandinistas. He regularly brands Clinton a `radical' and `extremist,' and talks of Washington as though it were a capital city under occupation.''
In a briefer offering, James Carney in Time (Nov. 7) calls the Virginia Senate race the silliest of the season and a freak show. He says Robb ``has been bathed in shame.'' And more than anything else, he attributes North's success ``to his prodigious fund raising as well as his skill in articulating the anger that Virginians feel toward the political establishment. To his backers, the attacks on North by members of the elite only provide more reason to back him.'' MEMO: Compiled by staff writer Keith Monroe with assistance from staff
researcher Peggy Earle. by CNB