Renaissance Ruminations

A smorgasbord of erratic thoughts on parenting, politics, grilling, marriage, public speaking, and all the other things that make life interesting.

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Location: Burke, VA, Northern Virginia, United States

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Stay in the Game!

After a long illness last week saw the passing of former Democratic Congressman James Olin of Virginia (see title link for WaPo obit). His death is cause to pause and reflect on the career of a well respected public servant. It is also cause to pause and reflect on what can happen when a political party splinters and fails to pull behind a candidate. At a time when both parties seem intent on splintering on rocks of internal dissent it is a lesson worth remembering.

The Sixth District of Virginia has long been the Roanoke Congressional district. Long anchored in Roanoke, the district has changed shapes and now reaches up the Shenandoah Valley and includes all or part of the western shelf of highland Virginia counties (Alleghany, Bath, and Highland) and stretches east to pick up Lynchburg and Amherst County.

Republican Richard Poff won the Virginia Sixth district seat in 1956, the first Republican since Reconstruction to do so. Poff was followed by M. Caldwell Butler in 1973. Butler announced his retirement from the US House of Representatives prior to the 1982 elections, and a raft of republican candidates lined up. They included State Senator Ray Garland (Roanoke), Walter Potter (publisher from Lynchburg), J.T. Banton (Just retired Executive Director of the Virginia Jaycees, Lynchburg) and Delegate Kevin Miller, from Harrisonburg. Miller was certainly the new kid on the block, as Rockingham Country and the City of Harrisonburg joined the Sixth district after the 1980 census.

This was the time of contentious GOP conventions, weekend long brawls where different party factions slugged it out on the convention floor and-more often than not-in the parking lot afterwards. Generally the wounds cut so deep that the partisans of the losing candidate would sit on their hands in the general…but typically it was over a matter of ideology. But the 1982 6th district race followed a different path.

The GOP hopefuls rolled their RV headquarters into the August Expoland exposition center in June 1982 to do battle. They battled for four ballots, and Ray Garland led on all but the last. Garland’s pugnacious eloquence and unwillingness to hoe a strict conservative line, especially on abortion issues, made him unacceptable to conservatives. Some still remembered his somewhat quixotic senate candidacy in 1970 against Harry Byrd, Jr. It all made for just enough reasons to give the nomination by a narrow margin to Kevin Miller.

At the same time, in a much less fiery gathering, the Democrats nominated a little known retired General Electric executive named James Olin of Roanoke to carry their banner into the 1982 mid-term elections.

The 1982 elections were held in the midst of a recession and a backlash against “Reaganomics”. Several areas of the Sixth were hit hard, including the shuttering of factories in Lynchburg. In a hard fought but collegial race, the political newcomer from Roanoke beat the geographical newcomer from Harrisonburg to become the first democrat in a quarter century to hold the seat.

Nothing new here…the incumbent party loses a race in bad economic times. However, there is more to the tale…

Garland’s loss at the convention infuriated many Roanoke GOP members, who considered the seat to be a Roanoke birthright. Members of the Roanoke business community who found comfort in having a congressman in their hometown were also not pleased. Result? Much of the GOP leadership in the south end of the district sat out the race. They would not help with GOTV, they would not help with fundraising. They were sure their man Garland could beat Olin in 1984 with President Reagan running for reelection…and Kevin Miller lost the election by just over 1,000 votes.

Ray Garland got his shot in 1984, receiving the nomination unopposed, and entered the general with so much going for him. He addressed the GOP convention in one of those early day slots used to highlight candidates. He ran on a ticket with Ronald Reagan, who crushed Walter Mondale in Virginia. He ran on a ticket with John Warner, who crushed his little known opponent. With all this going for him, plus a unified GOP, Ray Garland lost to Jim Olin 52% to 48%, and receded into obscurity.

Olin held the seat until he retired in 1992, when the seat went to Republican Bob Goodlatte, who has held it since.

The 1982 election is only a small picture in the electoral history of this country. Many philosophical lessons can be drawn from this episode, from the fragile egos of humans to the fragile nature of human fortune. I remember it as a time when members of a political party split over selfish matters, and allowed a seat to slip to the other side. I also offer it as a cursory warning as to the dangers of assumption, pride, and a failure to work for the common good in any political season.

At a time when Democrats and Republicans in the USA are bent on focusing on the differences between segments within the party, with catastrophic results for their nominees in ensuing elections, it seems a good time to remember that it is difficult in any competitive realm to win unless you field a full team.

Whatever your political stripe-remember to stay in the game.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Churchill? Roosevelt? Reagan? Mao? Nope, guess again!

My time on the elliptical always reaches this moment where my mind drifts free and some bright thought pops into my head...and if I am lucky it stays there long after I finish showering.

Today, a thought occured to me that caused me to realize there is an unsung hero in history-because I had a blinding glimpse of the obvious as to the identity of the most influential statesman of the 20th century.

There are obvious individuals. It would not take long to find backers of Churchill, Wilson, Roosevelt (pick 'em), Reagan, even Nixon. For those whose tastes run to the macabre, there is Hitler and Stalin. Some might say Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Mao. I imagine a few UN sec-gens would make the list.

But I suggest a less likely candidate, someone whose actions set the tone for the manner in which diplomacy and foreign policy has been carried out for much of the 20th century.

I refer to Neville Chamberlain, PM of Great Britain from 1937-1940. History regards him poorly-and rightly so-for his policy of appeasement to Nazi Germany and abandonment of Czechoslovakia. However, his actions have set the tone for much that came after. Never again would a government be willing to give into anything less than overwhelming force and obvious defeat-because to do so would be to engage in appeasement. Now there are some clear times when national or itnernational action has been needed...the invasion of South Korea and later of Kuwait being obvious examples. But from Chechnya to Algiers, from Vietnam to Baghdad, the issue of appeasement and the political fear of being tarred with that brush has led nations to take aggressive stands when perhaps other means would have been better...and all because of Neville Chamberlain.

So the next time you decide you cannot let someone get away with something because it will encourage them to do more of the same, take a moment and thank Neville Chamberlain...then go beat the beans out of that special someone!