Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 17, 1994 TAG: 9407130003
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A14 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
When the talk is of American politics and government, those are the sorts of descriptions you're likely to hear.
But leaders of the recently established Virginia Institute of Political Leadership believe such adjectives need not apply. The privately funded and bipartisan institute, which graduated its inaugural class last month, is dedicated to the proposition that government can be an arena for public service rather than trench warfare, that diverse viewpoints can be a source of strength rather than gridlock, that the prerequisite for political leadership can be a solid moral core rather than ethical emptiness.
Idealistic? Yes. Impractical? Not necessarily. Based at the University of Virginia, the institute is patterned after Walter De Vries' seven-year-old North Carolina Institute for Political Leadership - and of the latter's first 120 graduates, 47 were elected to public office within three years. In the North Carolina legislature, the roster of graduates is steadily growing, with many having arrived there by ousting incumbents.
Of the 19 people who graduated May 7 from the Virginia institute, one already has been appointed to a local school board and two have been named by Gov. George Allen to his welfare-reform commission.
Clearly, there's more to this than bleeding-heart mush. De Vries, godfather of the movement (institutes are springing up in several states besides North Carolina and Virginia), is a political pro: a former GOP pollster and consultant who got fed up with the shrill turn that political campaigning was taking. In Virginia's 18-week program - nine sessions on alternating weekends, with meeting sites rotated throughout the state - a major emphasis is instruction in campaign techniques and tools.
But unlike the traditional campaign schools run by political parties and pressure groups, that's not all.
Students are selected on the basis not only of geographic diversity, leadership potential and civic involvement, but also of differences in political viewpoint. One corollary is that having a viewpoint, and not merely an ambition for office, is considered a plus. Another is that, forced to recognize and consider other viewpoints, you may consider more fully the implications of your own positions and learn to seek common ground for compromise.
Which ties in with another component not found in the traditional campaign schools: What happens once you're elected or appointed? Considerable time is spent on how to reach office, but more time is spent on how to be effective once you're there. A fourth of the Virginia program is devoted to practical instruction in the dynamics and demands of governing, another fourth to current public-policy issues and options.
From that, students presumably make connections. For example, that negative campaigns don't build mandates for post-election progress. Or that hard decisions, not bumper-sticker slogans, balance budgets.
The Virginia Institute of Political Leadership, like its sister institutes in other states, will not appeal to every aspiring public servant. For those who see politics as merely an avenue to personal power, the emphasis on policy issues will seem irrelevant. For those who see political contests as apocalyptic battles between forces of good and evil, an emphasis on pragmatic consensus-building will seem unholy.
But for a public that wants in its political leadership better options than cynical calculators and ideological zealots, the institute's services are welcome.
by CNB