Rant rises from dead

The News Virginian
Published: October 16, 2008

A shrewd politician whose ascension within the Democratic Party has been meticulously constructed on his considerable acumen as a communicator, not to mention piles of money, Mark Warner knows well the importance of words. From some, he has fled to recently diminished avail. Now, with an election looming and a Senate seat within his grasp, the former telecommunications king finds himself in a thicket, absent clothes.

Fourteen years ago, when Warner was chairman of the state Democratic Party and his political star still was climbing, the future governor, we are told, said this to the National Jewish Democrat Council: “[I]f they have their way, [they] will take over state government, made up of the Christian Coalition, made up of right-to-lifers; but it’s not just the right-to-lifers, it’s made up of the NRA; but it’s not just that, it’s made up of the homeschoolers; but not just that, it’s made up of a whole coalition of people that have all sorts of different views that I think most of us in this room would find threatening to them and what it means to be an American.”

Republicans long have sought to affix these comments like a plague to Warner. He long has succeeded in elusion. After a radio ad featuring the remarks aired in the waning days of the 2001 gubernatorial campaign, Warner called a news conference during which he issued a sniff: The ad, he declared, was “not only inaccurate, but disrespectful.” Well, yes. Then he added, “Nothing in my being is intolerant.” Well, apparently no.

Endeavoring to resuscitate his Senate campaign by resuscitating a controversy, Warner antagonist Jim Gilmore earlier this month brandished a Web advertisement featuring audio of a man sounding very much like Warner issuing the disputed diatribe. This time, Warner feels the thicket’s thorns.

In an endorsement interview Thursday with The News Virginian, Warner offered an admission almost tacit. “I wish I had [the remarks] back,” he said. They “were way over the top.” Asked to define the latter phrase, Warner elaborated slightly, calling the remarks: “inappropriate, excessive.” So fell a denial in a soft thud.

Provided an opening to address the targets of his barbs, Warner ambled into dissertation on policy. Defining “over the top” as offensive would have been fitting. Repudiation coupled with an apology would have been still better. But then whom and what to believe, considering Warner’s years of indignation over being branded with the harangue that spilled from his lips.

So what to make of it all? Warner suggests personal growth. “I learned a lot in 14 years,” he said. Including, presumably, the inadvisability of verbally backhanding a large swath of constituents, some of whom reside here in the central Shenandoah Valley.

What disturbs is the aroma of foul cynicism, which Warner vows to disperse once ensconced inside the Beltway. Here emerges the echo of fellow Democrat Barack Obama, who expects to occupy a position on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Obama likely will be more formidable than Warner to those who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them ...” But even if Warner is friendlier to those he disparages, does that make him better?

He can be comforted by a double-digit lead in the polls that almost certainly will insulate him in November from the mid-October damage Gilmore sought to inflict. Gun owners, in particular, can be assuaged by Warner’s actions in support of the Second Amendment. And we can hope that Warner has grown in the manner that he suggests, that his remarks were more an indicator of political and personal adolescence than of the inner being of the man soon to be senator. Wishing for anything more – such as a statesman led by conviction – strikes us as futile.