Document text
--> --> Gilmore walks the plank, looks for work By Roger Simon George Bush is famous for loyalty, but even his patience has limits - as James Gilmore found out last week. Gilmore is the governor of Virginia, which some might consider a full-time job. But when Bush offered him an extra job back in January, Gilmore grabbed it. As a reward for helping to defeat Bush's arch-foe John McCain in the Virginia presidential primary last year, Bush offered Gilmore the chairmanship of the Republican party. The job is not quite as nifty as it sounds: In modern America, the president really controls his party, and not the other way around. It didn't used to be this way. In the days before candidates were well known - in the days before TV and radio that is - a party label was a way of telling voters whom to vote for. You might not know anything about Joe Schmoe, but if you knew that Joe Schmoe was the Republican candidate for president and you liked the Republican platform, you would vote for him. Platforms used to mean something. They were statements of positions and principles, and people used to study them before making their choice. Today, they are meaningless. Just how meaningless was demonstrated in 1996, when Bob Dole, the Republican nominee for president, admitted he had never read the Republican platform. Today, candidates don't need platforms, or even party labels, because they sell themselves and their personalities directly to the people via television. It is commonplace today, in fact, for candidates to run ads and put out campaign literature that never mention what party the candidate belongs to. So what does a party chairman do today? He raises money. Tons of it. Each and every day. His other duty is to go on the Sunday talk shows (which very few people watch) to argue with his counterpart in the other party. Just why Gilmore wanted to take on this unappealing job is not entirely clear, but one big reason might have been Virginia's unique term-limit law. Virginia is the only state in the union that limits governors to one term. In other words, as soon as you are elected, you are a lame duck. And this means as soon as you are elected, you begin looking for another job: Three of Virginia's governors have gone on to the U.S. Senate. Virginia's Douglas Wilder, who was the first elected black governor in history, bizarrely decided to run for the presidency in 1992. Why? Well, he was going to be out of a job soon, and he didn't have much else to do. So Gilmore, who was already busy running his state, decided to take on the Republican chairmanship, figuring that when he left hisgovernor's job in January of next year, he could continue on with the party job. In other words, he wanted his next job lined up. And he could have done this had he remembered one thing: The chairman doesn't really run the party. The White House does. And in the Bush White House, that means chief political guru Karl Rove. Rove immediately put his man in place to actually run the party, while Gilmore was supposed to be a figurehead. Instead, Gilmore tried to run things himself and earned Rove's enmity. Gilmore might have survived - George Bush hates internal spats and almost never fires anybody - but when Gilmore and the Republicans lost not only the New Jersey governorship in November, but Gilmore's home state, as well, that was all the excuse Rove needed to push him off the gangplank. So Gilmore announced on Friday that he would resign his chairmanship in January, the same month he will also leave the governorship. This means he will be out of work, and out-of-work politicians can be very dangerous: They are always looking for another office to run for. Roger Simon is a syndicated columnist for the Baltimore Sun. Email your... Technical questions & comments to: WebMaster Daily Tidings editorial comments & questions to: Editor Visit our other Oregon Newspapers... | Albany Democrat-Herald | Ashland Daily Tidings | Corvallis Gazette-Times | | Lebanon Express | Newport News-Times | Springfield News | Cottage Grove Sentinel | Ashland Daily Tidings 1661 Siskiyou Blvd. Ashland, OR 97520 Telephone 541-482-3456 © Copyright 2001 Lee Northwest Publishing