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shad, the guests were probably predominantly Republican, only 99 percent male and 99.9 percent white. Who can stay the hand of progress!
Ranging through the crowd were scores of politicians shaking hands, slapping backs and testing the uncertain political waters. Some were searching for votes, while others were determining if it was worth their time to try to search for them.
The common bond which united the vast majority of those attending, whether Democrat, Republican or independent, was the brotherhood forged of obligatory Virginia conservatism. At the shad plankings this ranges in degree from very to ultra.
And since it does so range, and since an odd symbiotic relationship between the Democrats, the GOP and others does so bind them, those attending were very leery about voicing thoughts which might offend anyone whose help might be needed further on down the pike.
Indeed, a traditional feature of any Shad Planking is an attack by the principal speaker on the extravagance and general rascality of the federal government. This had always served as a sort of rite of defiance of events stemming from the day of infamy at Appomattox.
This year the task fell to former Gov. Mills E. Godwin Jr. In rolling Godwinian tones he dutifully blasted the federal government for its trillion-dollarplus national debt. But since Godwin is a Reagan man, and since Reagan, is responsible for doubling the debt during his three years in office, Godwin didn’t dwell long on the subject. The bipartisan crowd gave his speech warm bipartisan applause.
What has happened to the Shad Planking is similar to what has happened to Virginia politics in general. The conservative Republican party has moved to occupy the high ground on the state’s political right. In order to win elections, the Democrats have had to move to the right, thus often blurring the philosophical line between the parties and their candidates. This has caused outrage among the Democrat’s black, liberal and labor constituent groups.
The “new Democratic Party” organized under Gov. Chuck Robb claims to have spread an umbrella wide enough to shelter all of the party’s diverse components. It worked in 1981 when Robb and ticket^swept the state. Whether this triumph, which was largely the result of a charismatic leader heading the ticket plus a series of lucky breaks, has been converted into a real organization at mid-deead^ remains to be seen.
In the meanwhile, most of the Virginia electorate views all this with a collective yawn. With both parties trying to woo the state’s vast moderate-to-conversative electorate, most voters tend to forget about party labels and vote for the individuals whose views most closely conform to their own.
This being the case, it is arguable that, sadly, Virginia politicians place a higher premium on followership than on leadership.
And if this is so, don’t look for any George Masons or Tom Jeffersons to emerge on Virginia’s political scence any time soon.
If they did appear they would likely be accused of opposing the state’s right-to-work law and favoring gun control. At least they probably would have been so accused at the Shad Planking.
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