
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 25, 1994                   TAG: 9405310133
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CONNECTIONS

IN THE summer of 1991, a federal grand jury began investigating U.S. Sen. Charles Robb's handling of a tape of an intercepted car-phone call between then-Gov. Douglas Wilder and a Wilder supporter; in August, Robb testified.

In October 1991, Robb voted for the confirmation of Clarence Thomas, President Bush's poorly chosen nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court.

In December 1992, Robb was granted a rare second appearance before the grand jury. Though its probe led to minor charges against three Robb aides, the panel declined to indict the senator.

Aha, says Sylvia Clute in May 1994, a connection. Robb's vote for Thomas must have been in exchange for a promise of friendly treatment by prosecutors in the Bush administration's Justice Department.

There's no direct evidence, you understand, but what else could it be? Surely, says the challenger in the June 14 Democratic primary, it's a "far more compelling" explanation for Robb's vote than the one he offered.

Granted, anything's possible. But Clute's explanation is more ridiculous than compelling - the kind of conspiracy speculation that springs less from plausibility than from the predispositions of its promoters, not to mention a need to juice up a sluggish campaign.

Granted, too, Robb's explanation at the time was a little strange: He empathized, Robb said, with Thomas for the treatment he suffered during confirmation hearings. In Robb's case, though, the eccentric naivete of his explanation argues harder for the likelihood of genuineness than would depth of analysis.

Simple political calculation is also a more plausible explanation than any deal with the Bush administration. At the time, Robb and other Southern Democrats seemed to have less to lose by voting for Thomas' confirmation than against it. Many black voters, the polls said, resented Anita Hill. The ballot-box power of women's anger against pro-confirmation Democrats wasn't demonstrated until months later, and then mostly in the North.

In a way, the Clute theory (aside from its rankly speculative nature) may be too uncynical. Sure, Robb's second chance to testify before the grand jury smacks of special treatment. But why expect special treatment to come at the cost of a vote? Isn't special treatment the norm for U.S. senators?

Keywords:
POLITICS

by CNB