"Unlike fine wines and fish tales, campaigns do not improve with age.

Campaign seasons are getting to be far too long for most people to endure.

Take the bizarre slugfest between U.S. Sen. George Allen, R-Fairfax County, and Falls Church Democratic challenger Jim Webb.

Webb actually got into the race late, only eight months ago, while Allen has been running, and perhaps losing, twin races for the past year.

Double coverage failure

Allen’s decision to run for re-election this year while actively pursuing support for the presidential nomination in 2008 was a monumental mistake, although not as obviously dumb as the momentum-changing remarks delivered Aug. 11 at Breaks Interstate Park. On that day, Allen “YouTubed” himself by making fun of Indian-American student S.R. Sidarth, calling him “macaca” and welcoming him to America and the real Virginia.

The choice of running for a second Senate term while wooing Republican presidential voters in Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire made Allen the permanent campaigner scrambling in two different directions.

Whether the plays are called Hubris No Huddle or Hail Mary, the long passes Allen attempted brought him a much tougher rush of national press scrutiny than his offensive line of big-salary consultants and image-shapers could handle.

Win or lose this year for another Senate term, Allen’s 2008 race for president suffered a 30-yard sack.

Character counts

Suffering from intense scrutiny of character in a media blitz from the left, right and up the middle, his offensive line folded.

The old quarterback refused to punt his presidential ambitions, failed to advance the ball and has been playing in an unfamiliar defensive position, denying or apologizing for ugly and petty flaws while asserting Webb has ugly and literary flaws.

If campaign manager Dick Wadhams is the insider who insisted that Allen attack Webb’s war novels for sexual content, Wadhams must share the blame for shift-the-message pettiness based on out-of-context snippets in fiction that Allen slammed without reading.

Even Sen. John McCain, like Webb a decorated Viet-nam combat veteran, praised some of Webb’s war writings as the best-selling work it was.

Republicans knew the Allen ’06 race was at odds with the Allen ’08 efforts in several serious ways. If he were to win the Senate race and then realize presidential sweepstakes dreams, Allen would give up a Senate term after two years and allow a
Democratic governor to name a Democrat to the seat.

Meanwhile, Webb’s understated amateurism as a candidate offered a mildly reassuring contrast to Allen’s relentlessly smash-mouth style of partisan play.

Webb’s campaign has benefited from his own lack of political acumen as well as from Allen’s self-destructive bent. The race may be essentially tied today in a contest Allen figured to win big by running up the score, calling a timeout near the end and kicking a gratuitous field goal just to rub in a little salt.

For months, Webb looked to many people somewhat like a political neophyte who couldn’t campaign his way out of a wet paper bag. In an extremely bad year for Washington insiders and incumbents, Webb’s novel approach to low-key and amateur politicking paid off as less obnoxious than typically professional.

With Democratic senators carrying him through a June primary win and pushing ever bigger piles of campaign cash at him since then, the newcomer to elective politics set sail with a gale at his back and a growing volunteer army jogging and blogging into battle.

The too long campaign did not wear as thin for Webb, who was less visible in the months after his primary win.

During a rough campaign, character became the issue for much of the ugly contest.

Allen’s tough character and persona as a cowboy, an image he is now attempting to soften, provided contrast to Webb’s image as a bookish, wonkish ex-warrior opposed to the war in Iraq that Allen favored.

Allen keeps saying that Virginians know him, which is true compared with their knowledge of Webb, but that knowledge is a sharp sword with more than one edge.

In a year in which he was not simultaneously pursuing the presidency, Allen would win.

In a year in which he had created more than a sliver of distance between himself and President Bush, Allen would win.

In a year in which America was doing better in a war created by Bush and backed to the hilt by Allen, he would win.

In a year in which he had not made character the issue, Allen would win.

But in a year in which character, the war and Bush appear to be issues No. 1-3 for many voters, Allen is locked in the tightest race since he first won an Albemarle and Nelson County House of Delegates seat over James B. Murray by 25 votes in 1982.

Among the bad trends in politics are the too-long campaigns in which millions of dollars are spent on obnoxious television ads that attack time and again with an out-of-context slam twisted from some half-true assertions of what another has said.

Both sides are slamming away on television these days in ads that twist and turn and pike and pique. Americans may just vote to turn off their television sets or vote against the last slammer who insulted their intelligence or sense of decency." (Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, November 4, 2006)

Editor's Note: An Index to coverage of George Allen on the Loper website may be found at http://loper.org/~george/archives/2006/Aug/925.html