THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 12, 1995 TAG: 9511110003
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: Perry Morgan
LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
Especially in politics, it is harder to practice than to preach. Gov. George Allen, for example, took expensive television ads to say the Republicans trusted local citizens to take care of their own affairs and then, without a wrinkle in that smooth smile, told them how to vote.
The result of Allen's intervention in legislative elections led to wretched excess in personal attacks, campaign spending and confusion of issues - the typical result of a fight over small stakes. There was, after all, nothing to fear from a state government Allen trotted out as a bodacious usurper and a haven of big-spending liberals.
While Democrats and Republicans have differed over the years, they've shared a sense of fiscal prudence evident in superior bond ratings, in a good reputation for management and an absence of scandal. A long line of governors reflected this rectitude in public behavior - being short on levity and long on decorum.
Unlike George Allen, they would have flinched from addressing Virginians as ``folks'' with that suggestion of palsy-walsy intimacy and trust. A small point. Let it pass. The main point is that Governor Allen, in the name of ``honest change,'' asked Virginians to view Richmond as Washington, a bureaucratic swamp that he, given a majority in the Assembly, would drain. This was not an adaptation of Gingrichism, but a direct copy of the Contract With America scenario. The copying lacked finesse and seemed fishy in equating very different political cultures.
More important, it elevated the politics of personality. The governor put himself and his political future very much at the center of a nasty campaign. What matter the merits of Clancy Holland of Virginia Beach or, indeed, the merits of Ed Schrock, the Republican who defeated Holland in their Senate race? Whomever the governor could elect would be a figure credited to his account; had the strategy worked statewide, the Assembly would have been diminished even as the governor's image was projected onto the national stage.
Given the governor's own emphasis on local responsibility for local issues, this would have been an undesirable result. If Virginians want their governors to cast a larger shadow, they can let them run for more than one term. If governors have national ambitions, as Douglas Wilder did, they can take them directly to the nation. This is the way of accountability, and of avoiding the California example where Republican Gov. Pete Wilson deliberately fired up divisive issues in order to further his failed bid for the presidency. Why in the world should Virginians wish to imitate the primitive nature of national politics?
Governor Allen can console himself that abler politicians than he failed in efforts to pick their own legislators. Franklin Roosevelt was bold enough to appear on stage with Walter George, a sitting U.S. senator, and ask voters to unseat George in favor of Roosevelt's hand-picked challenger. Voters devoted to Roosevelt responded by re-electing the senator in a landslide. The president's candidate is a very small asterisk in the annals of politics. MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB