Allen's curious spell of self-destructiveness

Sen. George Allen just proved how much can change in politics in just one week. The infamous Macaca Gaffe of Aug. 11 seized up his campaign’s jolly momentum, which had been steadily gaining over the summer. Then the lame series of changing excuses the senator and his camp tossed out began what has been his decline in momentum ever since.

Now I’m waiting for the next new excuse. Like, perhaps we’ll hear that Allen had a bad reaction to some medication, which had him hallucinating. So the senator mistook the video camera toting tracker -- S.R. Sidarth -- for a terrorist, which would mean Allen assumed that insulting the man was his patriotic duty.

Then, as the Macaca story morphed from concern and outrage over the racist aspects of his loutish remarks at Breaks Interstate Park -- by midweek -- something else began to bubble to the surface: Perhaps George Allen’s aw-shucks, nice guy, poor man’s Ronald Reagan persona has been, and remains, just about as phony as it gets.

Perhaps that video tape showed much more than a mere slip of the tongue by a closet racist. It may have also revealed a bullying personality that serves to undermine the entire easy-to-like Southern gentleman act Allen has been affecting for his entire career in Virginia politics.

Whether Allen is a total phony, or not, won’t matter much to his rightwing hardcore base. His 97 percent support for President George Bush’s policies is more than enough for that crowd.

But to this commonwealth’s independents, as well as the moderate wing of the Virginia GOP, authenticity, good manners and common sense may matter more than Allen would like, in a post-Macaca world. Until this year, Allen has always enjoyed the support of moderate Virginia Republicans, in spite of how far to the right of them he drifted.

Now I have to doubt the courtly Sen. John Warner is all that happy with the abusive George Allen who starred in that video. The utter stupidity of Allen’s ill-chosen words and swaggering demeanor in that candid video footage -- together with the fact he knew was being recorded -- almost suggests Allen suffered a curious spell of reckless self-destructiveness.

With 11 more weeks to go in Allen’s contest with Jim Webb to represent all Virginians in the U.S. Senate for the next six years, the Macaca Gaffe has blown apart the lock Allen seemed to have on reelection. Now the doorway is open to even more change.