From the WSJ Opinion Archives
CROSS COUNTRY
Warner Warning
Watch Virginia's Republican senator.
ARLINGTON, Va.--Sen. John Warner seems to have made a political career out of proving the adage that timing is everything.
He married Elizabeth Taylor not long before running for Senate in 1978. Narrowly losing the GOP primary, he got the nomination anyway when the man who beat him died in a plane crash. Then he edged out a victory in the general election at a time when Republicans were just coming up in Virginia.
Now it would seem that Mr. Warner, a seasoned incumbent politician with strong military credentials, is perfectly positioned to lead his party back to electoral victory in a state where its fortunes have been flagging and it has been hurt by an unpopular war. But there is one just one problem. Mr. Warner is considering hanging it up and calling it a career.
Mr. Warner came up in a time in Virginia politics--the 1970s--when the party just starting to make strides. He is also an established military Republican. Secretary of the Navy under President Richard Nixon during the Vietnam War, he served in the U.S. Marines during the Korean War; more recently, he was chairman of the Armed Services Committee.
And he is also turning against the war in Iraq.
In January, Mr. Warner opposed the surge of 30,000 troops, and he is now weighing how to stake out middle ground between Democrats' demands for withdrawal and Republican support for the president. The thinking in Washington is that, next to Sen. John McCain, Mr. Warner is the most influential senator on the war. If he votes to defund ongoing military operations, he would likely be followed be more than a few Republicans.
It's a position of influence Mr. Warner must relish. He was never really comfortable in a party with Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell (both his constituents) as social conservative leaders. He's a Republican in the old style, a country-club Republican not beloved by conservatives.
Now with the war heading toward a September showdown--when Congress will have to authorize spending for the next year--Mr. Warner is becoming a key Republican barometer. If he goes, other establishment Republicans will find it much easier to abandon the president. And if he does go, Mr. Warner will likely win praise for his leadership. This is Mr. Warner's opportunity to show off his independent--i.e., less Republican--credentials. And in typical Warner fashion, he's doing his best to drag out his decision-making process by not breaking from the president too early.
It's been a rough stretch for Virginia Republicans. In three of the four past major statewide races (those for either Senate or the governor) the GOP has lost all but one--Mr. Warner's re-election in 2002. In that span GOP Sen. George Allen, a budding presidential hopeful, was defeated and a bona fide Democratic star, former Gov. Mark Warner, has been made.
It's ironic that Mr. Warner could be a savior for the Virginia GOP. As historian Frank Atkinson notes in his book "Virginia in the Vanguard," he was estranged from the party in the 1990s, refusing to endorse two GOP nominees for statewide office (Mike Farris for lieutenant governor and Oliver North for Senate). Both men lost.
His turn back to the GOP can be traced to 1996, when he beat back two tough challengers. First he won the Republican Party's nomination in tough fight against James C. Miller III. In the general election it was Warner vs. Warner, as the incumbent senator ran against the man who would later go on to become a very popular governor. The double near-death experience pushed him back into the fold. Or was it that conservatives realized they had to tolerate him?
What's fascinating is that from a 30-year perspective, Mr. Warner hasn't lost touch with Virginia ideologically. The two parties ebbed and flowed past him, while he's continued to appeal to independent voters. Over the past four decades, they've traded dominance in statewide elections, with one party or the other winning three or four major races in a row. In this state, each party has been able to hold the upper hand, through the support of independent voters, for about a decade at a time.
In the '70s, independents started aligning with the GOP. In the '80s, a slew of conservative Democrats (led by now former Sen. Chuck Robb) wooed them back. The '90s saw the Republicans take advantage of the Democrats moving slightly too far left to win four out of five major races. Now the Democrats are on their own winning streak, thanks to putting on a more practical governing face and a Republican Party that's lost touch with the independents.
National handicappers have missed this trend because the state has sided with the GOP in presidential races. But that is changing too. Democratic Sen. John Kerry--a candidate who would have been out-of-step with Virginia's electorate in the past--lost the state by just eight points.
The joke I've used is that in 2006, Virginia seceded from the Confederacy. And culturally, that's true. It's now home to so many former Northerners (as well as transplants from the West, Southwest and New South) that it is no longer a purely Southern state. That may be why Mr. Warner never really fit in with the state's GOP and fits well with the state now. He's not a real Southerner--he was born in Washington, D.C.
That brings us to 2008. Virginia is finally being recognized as a national battleground and Mr. Warner, 80, is hinting that he won't run for re-election. But there is reason to think he will. He is competitive enough not to want his seat to fall to a Democrat, and he may not want to retire if his departure sets his party up for an ideological primary fight between former Gov. James Gilmore and the senator's protégé, Rep. Tom Davis. And then there's Iraq. One very keen observer of Mr. Warner told me he thinks the old bull is getting so engaged in the debate over the war that he won't be able to pull away.
We'll know soon enough. But Mr. Warner has never been better situated for re-election than he is now, which is why the idea of his retirement has so many Republicans nervous, even as he flirts with the idea of breaking with the president on the war.
Mr. Todd is political director of NBC News.
