Drive a stake through the heart of poisonous politics
JUST AS IN "Casablanca" everyone comes to Rick's, almost everyone hereabouts sometimes walks the streets of Fredericksburg. On those streets, one is liable to bump into virtually anyone, and do so, despite differences of opinion, without blood in the eye. Maybe the rock-bottom definition of community is the disinclination to mentally assassinate others on sight. Beneath that is no community at all, which makes those who would upset this compact a threat to all.
The campaign to unseat state Sen. John Chichester, R-Stafford, by the boosters of his primary opponent, Mike Rothfeld, has been one long, shrill vilification of a serious public man who--agree or not with his politics--carries an earned reputation for devoted service and good character. The Chichester way is not one of venom. When in 1985 his handlers urged him to "go negative" in his race for lieutenant governor against Democrat Douglas Wilder, who had vulnerabilities, Mr. Chichester kept his punches up, losing with 48 percent of the vote. Yet forgiving anytime soon the orchestrated slurs of the current campaign would require that Mr. Chichester's name be preceded not by "Sen." but by "St." His supporters are roused for a warpath that stretches beyond Election Day.
The strategy of the Rothfeld forces is not new to anyone familiar with the smashface school of American politics. It involves combing the hundreds of votes cast by a veteran legislator, carefully selecting the most unflatteringly ones (or those that can be "spun" to seem so), and presenting these as the essence of the incumbent. Mike Rothfeld has placed the voting record of John Chichester in front of a funhouse mirror, pointed to the distortions in the glass, and called them reality. Not so.
Of course there are philosophical differences between Mr. Chichester and Mr. Rothfeld, and of course politics is often about sharpening such differences, and of course Mr. Rothfeld, a relative unknown, must carry a large whetstone to sharpen them. But to make the case that Mr. Chichester is agnostic on abortion you must disregard his 90 percent lifetime favorable voting rating by the Virginia Society for Human Life. To make the case that he is a promiscuous tax-and-spender, you must hide dozens of his votes to kill measures carrying a price tag for taxpayers, and you must not say that he has voted for precisely three tax increases in 25 years, including two miniscule hikes in the gas tax (1 cent, 2 cents) and one "horse trade" vote for legislation with no chance of passage.
To make the case that Mr. Chichester is an enemy of private educational alternatives, you must edit from your mailers his 1984 sponsorship of homeschooling academic safeguards without which the state may have tried to stop the practice. To claim that Mr. Chichester is a closet liberal, you must forget to say that he left the Democratic Party in 1969 because of its excessive liberalism.
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