Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 22, 1993 TAG: 9304220430
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RAY L. GARLAND
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Cast in the role of scapegoat for the Iran-Contra affair, he turned the tables on a stellar cast of congressmen and legal eagles to emerge, briefly, as a national hero. Second thoughts have since prevailed, but North remains a hero for many rah-rah conservatives. His mere availability for the GOP senatorial nomination was sufficient to make him an instant front-runner.
That status is at least partly a reflection of the nature of the nominating process within the Virginia GOP. Seven candidates for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general have flushed out an astonishing 14,000 delegates for the party's nominating convention in Richmond June 4-5.
Impressive, but that still represents only a tiny fraction of the state's eligible voters, or even rank-and-file Republicans. Four years ago, when the GOP invited the masses into a primary to decide its gubernatorial nomination, 400,000 responded.
But the GOP will not soon nor easily go back to a primary. The conventional wisdom now is that when delegates are being chosen next year, they will favor the hot-button conservatism and diehard Reaganism represented by North.
While acting very much like a candidate, North is months away from making it official, and is almost certain to have at least one serious opponent if he does run. Former Reagan budget director James Miller is testing the waters and would dearly love to make the race if anyone could get excited about him, which no one has.
Another potential candidate is Richard Cullen, recently sacked by Attorney General Janet (No Politics) Reno as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District to make way for a deserving Democrat.
Long active in Republican affairs, Cullen made a large political splash by teaming up with Gov. Douglas Wilder to win support in the General Assembly for legislation restricting the purchase of handguns. If polls be gospel, this put Cullen on the side of the angels.
When parties meet in convention, the activists come to the fore. They're also the people most devoted to a party's ideological center of gravity. Thus, Democrats in convention are likely to be far more liberal than the electorate as a whole, and Republicans far more conservative. When delegates give free rein to their emotions, the result is likely to be a nominee who has difficulty winning the general election.
There can be no question that North causes conservatives like former GOP state chairman Don Huffman to salivate and dream of the good ol' days.
In the six years of his celebrity, organizations controlled by North have raised and spent the astonishing sum of $20 million. There can be no doubt that he can raise the $2 million required to wage an effective campaign for the nomination, or the $8 million it would take for a cover-all-bases race in the general election.
The money issue settled, the larger question GOP activists must face is: Will North sell? Again, the conventional wisdom is he won't. But it's wildly premature to count this as carved in stone. The result 18 months from now will be governed by two factors: how many candidates enter the race and whether President Clinton is perceived as sap or savior.
A race between the incumbent Democrat Charles Robb, Wilder running as an independent and North in Republican silks in a climate of opinion hostile to Clintonism could easily make North Virginia's next senator on the strength of 37 percent of the vote. But what happens if a Perotista cuts the deck four ways is anybody's guess.
There are Virginians who will never accept North, and others who will always cherish him as Mr. Valiant-for-Truth. But the outcome of any election in which he's a candidate will be decided by those who don't have strong feelings. If you could sit that group down and take them through the whole Oliver North story, you might win over a majority. But that isn't possible.
North's task will be to define himself before his opponents (or the media) do it for him. That won't be easy because the story he has to tell is far more complex than the one that can be told about him, which might be encapsulated under the schoolyard chant, "Liar, liar, pants on fire!"
While some see him as hero and others as villain, I see him as neither. I see him, rather, as a small man thrust by an accident of history into a struggle for power as old as history.
North should be judged on the basis of his political ideas, not his role in Iran-Contra. That's because he was a relatively low-ranking military officer acting under the aegis of a president who had received a mandate from the people (and the Constitution) to conduct the foreign policy of the United States. That has never been a process noticeably nice or neat.
Ray L. Garland is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB