John Warner Just Keeps Hanging On

...Farris is campaigning for Warner's Republican challenger, former Reagan Budget Director Jim Miller...

...BUT AS WARNER HEADS FOR ALMOST CERTAIN RE-ELECTION, THEY'RE DISCOVERING, THE HARD WAY, HE'S MUCH SHREWDER THAN THEY ARE...

...For the past two years, he has held out the possibility of bolting the GOP and seeking re-election as an independent if the party chose its nominee in a convention of party activists, as it did in 1993 and 1994, rather than a primary...

...he still largely sees himself that way, theatrically framing his dissents as acts of conscience...

...So Warner got the nod, and, with help from conservative activists who disliked him, won the election...

...Some of the reasons are mechanical...

...They go with the incumbent...

...Intead he summoned the press to his office and declaimed that "I could have made a safe political choice" by refusing the school's invitation...

...That left Miller, a doggedly devout but uninspiring former Reagan administration economist who has failed to attract crowds or cash...

...Yet there's something genuinely attractive, admirable, and quite un-Clintonlike in Warner's instinctive sense of tradition, grandeur, and military patriotism—and something quintessentially American in his moral certitude and his distrust of ideology...

...Thus he is having trouble retooling his campaign to tap anti-establishment votes...

...Bush has specifically cited his debt to Warner for rallying the Senate in support of the Persian Gulf War, and the two men have long admired each other...

...It took days of angry phone calls from conservatives to bring Dole around...

...In Virginia, Jim Miller, who served as an adviser to Gramm's campaign in the state, represents Gramm's views on spending and Steve Forbes's views on taxes...

...Notions of manhood and courage suffuse even the most trivial of Warner's deliberations...

...For him to say John Warner is pro-family—that is an absolute sellout on Dan Quayle's part...

...Apart from ideology, of course, simple friendship also defines, unites, and motivates the establishment...

...I just don't view myself as a stick-in-the-mud, and get up each day and figure out what it is you can do to better the life of mankind...

...It's not only that they have failed to mount a cohesive challenge to the senator...

...And what was the decision...

...I could get no help from Dan Quayle in the [1993] general election," sputters Farris...

...He routinely calls issues and decisions "tough" in Senate debates, and it seems that, for him, everything's a moral dilemma or a struggle...

...Conservative critics scorn Warner's talent for projecting virtue...

...and who, years later, bucks the line of his political party with the non-apology, "That's why they elected me—to be a leader, not a follower...

...Last year, two days before Newt Gingrich assumed the Speaker's role at the vanguard of the Republican revolution, Warner scoffed at the House GOP's "unrestrained enthusiasm...

...40 June 1996 • The American Spectator Academy rejected him for color blindness)—weaknesses Warner has gladly exploited in a state that prizes local roots and military honor...

...As one GOP district chairman put it, conservatives were going to suppress Warner's fundraising "so John can get the message, get out, and retire...

...Bush reaffirmed their bond at last year's fundraiser by exalting Warner as a "sensible" conservative, as though to distinguish him from the radical type...

...No one in the history of the United States Senate," Warner insisted at the time, "has ever sat in this chamber" after being "convicted of a felony...

...Though he called himself a "working farmer" and "cattle rancher," and claimed to have been "raised on a farm," in fact he was born in the city of Washington, and grew up in comfort on his father's surgeon's income...

...Mike Farris, a national co-chair of Pat Buchanan's campaign, speaks for the cultural right...

...State GOP Chairman Pat McSweeney got into a permanent feud with Republican Governor George Allen...

...But the difference between winning and losing often comes down to a choice between standing by your friends and standing on principle—something John Warner would be happy to tell you...

...41 Through personal wealth and the power of incumb ency, he's been able to buy the support, or at least the silence , of wouldbe antagonists...

...But the mighty dollar revived him again...

...This is another victory in a hard-fought battle for the rights of voters of Virginia," opined the senator...

...Many Virginia Republicans, including former Marines, still respect him for standing up to 011ie North in 1994...

...But if the revolutionaries truly intend to overturn the establishment, they'll have to stop gaping at its contradictions and start respecting and responding to its consistencies...

...Morton Blackwell, Virginia's Republican National Committeeman, is disgusted and baffled by Bush's meddling in the primary...

...In 1982, after he gave an address at a segregationist private school, unaware of its racial policy, he refused to admit his gaffe...

...Sample Warner dialogue: "Saw George Bush over the weekend...

...In deference to Warner, Dole refused to endorse North and held out the alternative possibility of supporting an independent candidate backed by Warner...

...One cannot help but marvel at a man who gave Liz Taylor an engagement ring adorned with red, white, and blue gems tones...

...Warner sold his farm two years ago, and until moving just across the Potomac in Alexandria last year, he lived in a Watergate apartment...

...Even Dan Quayle, who as Bush's deputy was supposed to represent the right, showed up at a Warner campaign rally this year to endorse the senator...

...The American Spectator • June 1996 39 But what they cannot survive is a failure to learn the lessons his career success should teach them...

...They're called U.S...

...Like Senator Phil Gramm, with whom he grew up in Georgia and taught economics at Texas A&M University, Miller manages to come off simultaneously as bumpkin and bean counter...

...Senate...

...If Warner is sometimes deficient in practicing loyalty, he is certainly capable of inspiring it...

...Marvelous human being, he and his wife...

...This year, at a Republican county convention in northern Virginia, Warner slogged through boos and heckling to announce his 1996 campaign motto, "Character counts...

...But I had the courage to consider it my duty [to speak at the school] so that I could establish a bridge between the principles to which I adhere and this remaining pocket of sentiment in Virginia...

...As a rival candidate put it, Warner was "the only farmer in Virginia who [had] a swimming pool in his barn...

...Because it's about whether the establishment, country-club portion of the Republican Party can demand loyalty while practicing treachery...

...Money has often greased Warner's way into jobs and out of jams...

...And Anthony Kennedy, the judge who took Bork's seat on the Supreme Court, cast the deciding vote to preserve Roe v. Wade in 1992...

...Unlike the Republican 38 June 19 9 6 • The American Spectator freshmen in the House of Commons, Warner is not in Washington to do a job and go home...

...And going back to Quayle's early days in the Senate, the senator and Quayle had a joint fundraising program...

...To this lifelong soldier, politics is just another opportunity to earn glory in battle...

...Another technical factor in Warner's favor is his ability, through both personal wealth and the power of incumbency, to buy the support, or at least the silence, of would-be antagonists...

...As he launched his campaign earlier this year, he declared, "My campaign will answer this question: Can an elected leader vote his conscience, put his principle before politics, and win...

...Whether to remain in the Senate or run for governor...

...Last year, when Miller and McSweeney cried foul over George Bush's appearance at a Warner fundraiser, Warner doused the uproar by allotting half the proceeds to Republican candidates for the legislature...

...He became a millionaire in 1957 by marrying the daughter of industrialist Paul Mellon, who helped finance Richard Nixon's career and, according to former Nixon aide John Ehrlichman, successfully demanded that Nixon put Warner in charge of the Navy (thus earning the young man the derisive nickname, "Warnermellon...

...43 ing Firm, Quayle faulted Warner for opposing Tower...

...But this year, Quayle not only endorsed Warner...

...One cannot help but marvel at a man who honors his country by giving Liz Taylor an engagement ring adorned with red, white, and blue gemstones...

...When the marriage collapsed, Mellon bestowed a reported $7 million on his former son-in-law...

...As he wrote: "'Turn the other cheek,' I quietly said to myself...

...As a member of Washington's economic policy advice industry, Miller has the burden of explaining why his think tank, Citizens for a Sound Economy, gave a trophy last year to Warner—whom Miller now calls a "Clinton Republican"—for a perfect voting record on fiscal issues...

...In the middle stands Warner, a crusty, visionimpaired Washington insider who hedges on term limits, opposes a flat tax, runs on his legislative and military experience, parlays his accumulated connections into a prohibitive financial advantage, and faults his Republican rivals for moral and supply-side extremism...

...While the establishment used their well-developed political instincts to rally around Warner, movement conservatives wasted much of their precious momentum squabbling among themselves...

...Jim has not had success in galvanizing support, as he should, from the conservative side of the party," McSweeney says...

...His ideological position in his 1996 nomination contest has precisely mirrored Warner's...

...Many Virginians share Warner's patriotic, steady-as-she-goes brand of conservatism...

...Until his college days, he spent only summers in Virginia...

...Bush, Dole, and Quayle "have worked closely with Warner through the years," says Kling...

...Later, under pressure to surrender to North's nomination, Warner shot back, "Nuts...

...I spent several hours with Warner last year in a vain attempt to extract something resembling a worldview—but like most of the party's old guard, he has a difficult time describing just what it is that he stands for...

...If we don't stick together," Warner exhorted fellow Republicans as he kicked off his campaign this year, "we'll undoubtedly hang separately...

...When a campaigning Phil Gramm came to Virginia (and dismissed Dole as a moderate), he refused to take sides in the race between Warner and Miller, his boyhood friend...

...And though Warner is far from loved, several Republican officeholders declined to run against him this year...

...When the Hotline, a campaign news digest, asked seventy political experts to name the most vulnerable Republican senator up for re-election in 1996, Warner's name topped the list...

...This race is the most important race in the country," Farris says...

...The American Spectator • June 1996 At times, Warner's moral vanity makes him look pompous and silly...

...They have underestimated his personal and financial resilience...

...He was the Senate Republican Leader...

...senators...

...Yet if he is no dependable conservative, he is no liberal either...

...That loose philosophy has led him instinctively to steer a middle course...

...Other than a stint in the early 1970's, he didn't pay income taxes in Virginia until 1990—and, like Gramm, he didn't serve in Vietnam (the Air Force Conservatism, as Warner construed it, seemed to consist loosely of respecting tradition and changing slowly, if at all...

...Business people put their immediate business interests before ideological interests," laments Huffman...

...He's nodded his head for them at the right times...

...By failing to count on the reserves of goodwill built up in his long Hill tenure, the insurgents badly misunderstood just how entrenched the Republican old guard really is...

...He's got that Bill Clinton ability," scoffs Don Huffman, a former state GOP chairman...

...It would be a mistake, however, to credit Warner's survival purely to political mechanics...

...In his days as a fox hunter, Warner reputedly insisted on riding a white horse...

...About Quayle's endorsement, McSweeney shrugs, "I'm mystified...

...Quayle's relationship with Warner is typical of how establishment bonds cross ideological and generational boundaries...

...then Jim Miller infuriated 011ie North's supporters by running against North in the 1994 Republican Senate race, with Warner's support, and challenging North's integrity and sanity to boot...

...Other establishment icons in the Warner camp include Henry Kissinger, Al Haig, and Colin Powell...

...He reveres the Hill's collegiality and reflexively speaks of himself as "this senator...

...Indeed, probably no member of the Republican Party is a better symbol of the divide between country-club traditionalists and new radicals than the 69-yearold Warner...

...In 199o, when abortion became the moral issue of the hour, Warner clung to the center, declaring himself "pro-choice with limitations, pro-life with exceptions...

...My support is anchored on a trust in my diverse experience, judgment, and credibility," he wrote...

...Warner also draws on wide support throughout the GOP's bigwigs...

...Mike Farris is amazed...

...I don't know," he faltered, his eyes wandering away...

...mittees have denied him their official support...

...When I asked him, on the other hand, what he had once meant by calling himself "progressive-thinking," he lapsed into a Dole-like daze of indifference and perplexity...

...As if to underscore the bond between Warner and Bush, Warner's aides have publicly attributed Bush's assistance in the senator's 1996 campaign to a friendship that dates back to Warner's support for Bush in his 198o presidential race against Reagan...

...Tower lost his confirmation fight...

...As a result, neither Miller nor McSweeney—who don't even coordinate with each other—has managed to unite conservatives against Warner...

...Somebody's going to stand up in front of that tank...

...The reflexive solidarity with which Dole, Bush, and other luminaries of the old GOP have closed ranks behind Warner in his battle against the right has caught movement conservatives off guard...

...And then a month later, Warner called the Contract With America impractical and rash, and took issue with House Republicans for seeking tax cuts before solving the country's welfare and crime problems...

...Bottom line: I am honest with myself, honest with my constituents....I work hard, quietly, in my own way....Political expediency may be your old-fashioned idea, but it is not mine...

...No Republican on the Hill supports Miller openly, although Morton Blackwell claims a number of conservative senators are secretly rooting for Warner's defeat...

...As an entrenched senior senator, Warner has attracted nearly $800,000 in PAC money and has tapped deep pockets in Virginia by tending assiduously to local industrial interests...

...With his ceremonious carriage and cadence, he is almost a tailored incarnation of Foghorn Leghorn, the prancing, Southern gentleman rooster of Bugs Bunny fame...

...Scorecards issued by a dozen interest groups and news organizations rate his voting record 84 percent conservative or better...

...Dole, of course, belongs to this brotherhood, too...

...I will not, in any way, step aside from the responsibility of making this tough decision...

...At last year's Virginia GOP retreat, Warner's enemies mocked him by staging a "Unity Breakfast" and serving "Principled Coffee...

...This time the heads are nodding back...

...A poll last year showed that Warner could back up his threat by easily winning the general election as an independent candidate...

...Part of the money would go to support the senator's re-election, and part of it would go to support Quayle's re-election, and a portion would go to the Senatorial Campaign Committee to support their overall re-election efforts of various Republican senators...

...The insurgent Republican radicals would do well to study Warner's comeback as they ponder the future of their stalled revolution...

...And recognizing this, Republicans who think ahead are inclined to vote for Warner on the grounds that he stands a better chance of keeping his seat in Republican hands than does a conservative hard-liner...

...When North's nomination seemed unstoppable, Warner defiantly vowed, "Do you remember Tiananmen Square...

...There's a hundred people in it...

...There's a great desire to leave this institution now," Warner told the press bravely, "but some of us have to stay...

...By headlining a Warner fundraiser, Bush helped boost him to a decisive financial advantage over the opposition...

...I do not now nor will I ever run up my white flag and surrender my fight for what I believe is in the best interest of my country, my state, and my party...

...Conservatism, as he construed it, seemed to consist loosely of respecting tradition and changing slowly if at all...

...His Capitol Hill office is a gallery of martial glory, decorated with mementos of ancestors in arms, a brass disk blown off a battleship at Pearl Harbor, a sculpture from the rubble of Manuel Noriega's Panama headquarters, and a bit of Scud missile from the Persian Gulf War...

...And here he is, coming in and supporting John Warner after he's committed treachery...

...They were colleagues together on the Armed Services Committee," explains Warner's spokesman, Eric Peterson...

...By persuading many Republican voters to stick with him rather than with their party, Warner has succeeded in holding the party hostage...

...Once again, instead of apologizing Warner depicted himself as the undeserving yet forgiving victim of Farris's angry reproofs...

...Both Quayle and Warner qualify financially...

...The sheer intimacy of official Washington fosters more respect for personal loyalty than for party solidarity...

...Miller fired off a separate epistle to Bush, demanding to know why he would side with Warner against the Republican rank-and-file "who campaigned their hearts out for you...

...George Bush's endorsement a month later made it plain that support for Warner was more than just senatorial courtesy...

...Conservatives who doubt that this strategy can win the Republican nomination for Warner seem to forget that it has done just that for Dole...

...It's the club," scoffs Don Huffman, the former Virginia GOP chairman...

...I've given up hying to explain why George Bush does many things," he sighs...

...both tend to wander off-point and lapse into sentence fragments...

...Dole lacks their aristocratic bearing, but shares many of their mannerisms, as well as the reflexive patriotism of their World War II military generation...

...But ladies and gentlemen, that's the way I do business, and I make no apology to anyone...

...Warner's uncertain loyalties have made Virginia's conservative activists eager to prove his point—by stringing him up...

...Both are plodding and circumspect...

...My conscience is clear...

...And as he approaches his third decade in America's House of Lords, Warner's reelection momentum is mounting just when the new radicals seemed sure they were going to oust him for good...

...Just eighteen months ago, with the grassroots working furiously against him, his approval ratings were down, and challenger Jim Miller was starting to edge him out in head-to-head polls...

...Two years ago, when 011ie North was nominated, Warner was traveling abroad with Dole...

...I personally know senators who are publicly on the record as saying, 'Warner is my friend and he should be renominated,' [but who] tell me quietly, 'Do everything you can to get that guy defeated,'" he says...

...With that money, and the money that Warner's glamorous second wife, Liz Taylor, attracted to his fundraising events, Warner injected half a million dollars into his 1978 campaign for the Senate, an outrageous sum just to court delegates at the state GOP convention...

...Where was Bob Dole when John Warner was doing what he did to me...

...Now Warner is seeking the party's help in his own Senate re-election bid...

...Instead, Warner has whipped Miller at raising cash and, though still drawing less than 5o percent support from likely voters, has surged ahead in the race, according to an April poll by Mason-Dixon Political/Media Research...

...by William Saletan IT'S BEEN LESS THAN A DECADE since John Warner, the decorous Republican senator from Virginia, helped sink the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Robert Bork...

...Its most obvious animating force is an aversion to movements, including Reaganite conservatism...

...asks Farris...

...He concluded: "It's not popular to put principle ahead of party, to put the interest of your country and your state ahead of politics...

...The problem is that his dissents have been particularly loud, proud, and costly to the Republican Party...

...he extolled the senator's "family values...

...In his book, Standing Firm, Quayle faulted Warner for undermining his party during the Tower debate...

...Most important of all, they have mustered little more than naive outrage as the pre-revolutionary Washington Republican establishment has rallied to Warner's defense...

...After Obenshain died in a plane crash two months later, conservatives who still distrusted Warner tried to recruit other candidates to carry the Republican banner...

...You're not going to turn this mighty ship of state a hard right," he warned, "or she'll roll over...

...Last year, McSweeney called Bush's appearance at Warner's fundraiser "a kick in the teeth" and told the former president in a letter, "Your decision is a slap at a grass-roots party that supported you faithfully in 1992...

...Bush's son Marvin belongs to Warner's campaign steering committee, as do former Bush White House aides Ron Kaufman and Sheila Tate...

...both are steeped in The American Spectator • June 1996 gentility but fond of dabbling in pork-rind populism...

...Virginia law allows independent and Democratic voters to cast ballots in the Republican primary, and Warner stands to collect their votes, thereby offsetting the ballots of angry conservatives...

...That would have been the easy thing to do...

...As undersecretary and then secretary of the Navy in the early 1970's, he favored racial integration — but opposed efforts to implement it at what he deemed an overaggressive pace...

...Warner strode into the gathering, drank a cup of the coffee, shook Mike Farris's hand, and took home a "Dump Warner" button to pin up in his office...

...Then, last year, as Warner was gearing up for his own primary fight, Dole endorsed him at a PAC fundraiser organized for Warner by the National Republican Senatorial Committee...

...Miller's principal problem, according to his ally Farris, is that he was "the establishment candidate" against North in 1994...

...He is home...

...Chuck Robb remains in the Senate, safeguarding vetoes and filibusters that North would have overridden...

...Having secured a primary by means of this threat, Warner can now exploit the advantages of incumbency and moderation that come with membership in the Republican establishment of Nelson Rockefeller, Gerald Ford, George Bush, and Bob Dole...

...In a tortured soliloquy on the Senate floor in 1992, he reflected that "the question is not what is best for me, but how can I best repay this debt?...To make a fair and objective choice between these two opportunities has indeed been one of the most challenging decisions that has ever confronted me...

...Warner's party treason was just the first of several episodes: He refused to support Mike Farris, the 1993 Republican nominee for lieutenant governor of Virginia, and later campaigned against 011ie North, the 1994 nominee for U.S...

...Why did Quayle do it...

...Warner, a Gerald Ford man, lost the nomination to state party chairman Dick Obenshain, a Reaganite...

...So why isn't Warner paying for these transgressions...

...Warner has always loved the smell of battle...

...This year he's endorsed Warner and extolled In Stand his "family values...

...This red-carpet treatment has left Virgina's party activists furious...

...Bill Kling, a former Warner aide who now works for Jim Miller, calls it "the Old Bull network of the Republican cloakroom...

...Two years ago, when Dole shunned North, his party's senatorial nominee, state GOP chairman Pat McSweeney prophesied warfare within the party "between insiders and 42 June 1996 • The American Spectator outsiders...

...And while it's true that he often helped out on his farm, tenant families handled the bulk of the labor...

...Moderation, too, is a Warner asset...

...Christian Coalition Executive Director Ralph Reed has promised that religious conservatives who campaigned for Farris and North will do unto Warner what he did unto them...

...The conservatives can6 survive a failure to teach Warner a lesson this year...

...He mended fences by writing a check to Obenshain's campaign and raising funds for him...

...He joined the Navy at 17 during World War II and went to Korea with the Marines six years later before serving as undersecretary and then secretary of the Navy during the Vietnam war...

...In Virginia, Warner's refusal to support Mike Farris secured the election of a Democratic lieutenant governor whose tie-breaking votes in the state senate have killed Republican proposals to expand parental rights and accord private citizens the right of initiative and referendum...

...And most of 'em are millionaires...

...This year, Warner struck a similar pose of selfless valor when a federal court granted his request to run for renomination in a primary rather than at a party convention, thereby sharply boosting his chances of re-election...

...Don Duncan, the party chairman for Virginia's Sixth Congressional District, notes that Miller is "having trouble raising money, which has translated into trouble in the polls...

...When Warner first ran for the Senate eighteen years ago, the Washington Post dubbed him "the farm boy from Cleveland Park...

...At other times, however, Warner's knightly attitude earns him widespread admiration...

...Two grassroots groups on the right are working for Warner's defeat in the primary, and a pair of Republican county comWILLIAM SALETAN is writing a book on the politics of abortion for the University of California Press...

...Apparently obsessed with principle, he seems unable to define or apply it coherently...

...Perhaps the most naked display of Warner's aspirations to sainthood appeared in a 1993 essay in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, in which the senator defended his refusal to support his fellow Republican Farris...

...But they soon discovered that no one but Warner could pay off Obenshain's campaign debt and, in the three months remaining, invest and raise enough additional capital to finance a credible campaign...