Two flavors of GOP Senate candidates: Reagan and Washington

By Norman Leahy | Friday, June 3rd, 2011 | History, Politics, Virginia

One question my colleague Scott Lee likes to ask the political types who appear on our radio show is “who is the president you most admire?” It’s a bit of an innocuous question, but it can also be quite revealing. Scott has asked this question of all of the declared Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate seat that Sen. Jim Webb (D) is vacating in 2012 and the answers have shown a remarkable split: either you’re a Reagan fan, or you’re a George Washington kind of guy.

The Reagan admiration (voiced by fmr. Sen. George Allen and Northern Virginia-based television production company owner Tim Donner), I can understand. Modern conservatives bow before Reagan as post-Civil War Republicans idolized Lincoln. It’s political short hand, or as my friend Barnie Day would describe it, a dog whistle. Partisans know exactly what you mean without having to explain.

But the admiration for Gen. Washington (attorney David McCormick and Chesapeake Bishop E.W. Jackson) is different. Here we have a president who really didn’t want the office, but knew he was the only man for the job. Everyone did. He was also a believer in the small “r” republican tradition who saw holding office as a duty and not as a path to power and riches.

Washington’s virtues have a strong appeal for those who identify with, or have been active in, the tea party movement, so perhaps that explains why some of the candidates (who are campaigning as tea party-like insurgents) hold Washington as their example.

The Washington admiration is, in a way, a throwback to a much different time in Virginia. Washington’s shadow loomed large over the political landscape for decades after his death, his example influencing politicians up and down Virginia’s political culture. Even today, his statue commands pride of place inside Virginia’s capitol, while the other Virginia-born presidents are relegated to more circumspect busts on the surrounding walls.

But still it’s strange how not one of the GOP candidates has embraced any of Virginia’s other presidential sons. The only candidate who comes close is George Allen. Allen frequently talks about Thomas Jefferson and his approach to government, but Reagan is the one who motivates Allen’s politics.

Allen will also talk about James Madison when the topic veers toward the idea of federalism and the limits placed on the national government, but no one else does. And James Monroe? He’s forgotten almost entirely, despite that “Era of Good Feelings,” his role as an anti-federalist at Virginia’s constitutional convention and that old “Monroe Doctrine” thing.

Utterly forgotten is William Henry Harrison. The scion of one of Virginia’s great families, he had the good grace to die shortly after taking office. And he’d left the commonwealth long before that, so good riddance. His Virginian successor John Tyler – the accidental president – raises nary an eyebrow. Plus, he was (briefly) a member of the Confederate Congress, so the less said about him the better.

Zachary Taylor? The old hero of the Mexican War who could trace his ancestors back to the Mayflower decamped to Kentucky, then Louisiana, so he doesn’t count. And don’t even think about Princeton professor Woodrow Wilson (born in Staunton, Virginia in 1856). Glenn Beck has made him into the reincarnation of the Devil and the Boogieman, so he’s about as off-limits as you can get.

Perhaps one day, Scott will ask his presidential question of a Virginia office seeker and he or she will reply “None of them. I prefer the founder who was a bit crabby, who liked being close to home, disliked politics, though he served reluctantly, and was devoted to principle. Give me George Mason, the father of the bill of rights.”

Now there’s a candidate I could support.

(Originally published in the Washington Examiner. Cross-posted at Score Radio Network)

Addendum: GOP Senate candidate Jamie Radtke’s campaign contacted me to say that the president she most admires is…James Madison, “…who not only was the father of the Constitution but also opposed a national bank, advocated strongly for federalism, and wrote the Virginia Resolution.”

And let’s not forget, he was one of the three authors of The Federalist Papers, which ought to be required reading for every would-be, and incumbent, office holder.

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