Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, September 10, 1994 TAG: 9409120072
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Attention, all widows and orphans: It's safe to come out of hiding. Charles Robb says he didn't mean it.
Robb brought his re-election campaign to the Roanoke Valley on Friday, and spent much of his time volunteering to anyone within earshot what he really meant during Tuesday's debate when he declared he'd "take food from the mouths of widows and orphans" to cut the federal deficit.
Robb told a lunchtime crowd of about 40 people at the Jefferson Club in downtown Roanoke that he was "a little bit perplexed" that so many listeners apparently took him literally.
Instead, the Democratic incumbent emphasized - as he has several times this week - that he was simply trying to come up with an "obviously outrageous" example to show how serious he is about deficit reduction.
"In the debate there was all this posturing and lack of willingness to confront the hard issues," Robb said.
"Yet I'm told the next day lots of people were attempting to suggest that I'm truly mean-spirited, I'm truly attempting to do in the most vulnerable in society and that clearly isn't the case.
"The point I was trying to make, and may have made so successfully that it becomes part of the history of this particular election, is that if we're going to be serious with the people, we've got to tell them what things cost.
``We can't always say, `I'm going to give you this, I'm going to protect that for you,' and when it comes time to pay the bills, say, `I'm going to cut your taxes.' That's part of the reason our national debt now exceeds $4.3 trillion and is going to go up."
It was a point on which Robb dwelled during his lunchtime talk, brought up repeatedly during a series of interviews and even volunteered to some of the ordinary citizens he met during an afternoon handshaking tour of downtown Vinton.
Robb talked about the "widows and orphans" line so much, in fact, that he apparently forgot to push the point his staff wanted him to make - that Republican Oliver North's proposals to cut spending don't add up to much money.
Indeed, a written statement from Robb's Northern Virginia campaign headquarters blasted North in a way Robb himself didn't:
"Closing a gym, or eliminating arts funding, may sound good on the radio talk shows, but it won't make a dent in the $202 billion deficit or the $4.3 trillion debt. In fact, all of Oliver North's cuts would make up a trifling $700 million."
Granted, "widows and orphans" was one of the more memorable moments of the debate, the kind of line that gets ridiculed on drive-time radio shows.
But did voters really take it so seriously that Robb needs to spend this much time clarifying it?
Al Wilson, chairman of the Roanoke Democratic Party, seemed to think not.
"Hopefully, he'll quit trying to explain it by the end of the day and let it die," Wilson said.
On the other hand, one voter whom Robb met during his handshaking tour of Vinton - lawyer Bruce Mayer - told Robb he ought to take the opposite tack, and push the line even harder.
"This widows and orphans line, stick with it," Mayer told him, when the two met in the middle of Lee Street. "People know what you mean. People listened, didn't they?"
Mayer thought it was a great way to get voters' attention about the seriousness of the federal deficit.
"Anybody with any sense knew he didn't mean it literally," Mayer explained later.
Nevertheless, Robb seemed to think they did - and that's the problem with Robb's campaign right now, says Virginia Tech political analyst Bob Denton.
"No one is taking the line literally," Denton says. "It is symbolic, however. It shows bad judgment even by uttering it.
``If it had been clever, if he had turned the humor on himself, if he was not in trouble in the polls, then it would be something he could shrug off.
``But they've now had [three days] of damage control on it. That shows me as an observer he's either behind, he's lost already or he's paying a lot of money for bad advice."
By spending so much time trying to explain what he meant, Denton says, "Robb is giving this life. The more he tries to explain it, it just makes it worse."
Denton's free advice? Robb should try to laugh off the line. "He could say, `Dan Quayle can't spell potato? OK, I give bad examples.' But this is continuing to shoot himself in the foot."
Humor, though, has never been one of Robb's strong points - and he made it clear Friday he's not likely to try levity again.
Touring the garage of Vinton Motors, Robb joined some mechanics looking under the hood of a Mercury LeSabre. He was asked, jokingly, if he thought North changes his own oil.
Robb smiled, paused for a moment, then choose not to answer.
"After my calculated attempt the other night, I better not joke around," he said, and then moved on to the next work bay.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB