Virginia's Real Politics
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Preston Bryant is a Republican who has represented Lynchburg and part of Amherst County in the Virginia House of Delgates since 1996.

At the very least, it doesn’t need to be losing the few good ones it currently has.

One of the good ones, as we all know, is Bob Goodlatte.

When Goodlatte first ran for congress in 1992, he did so on the promise of term limits. Twelve years, to be exact.

That would mean his name’s appearance on this November’s ballot -- where it will show up against no Democratic opposition -- would be his last time seeking voter permission to represent the beautiful 6th District of Virginia.

Now, Bob, whom we all know just that familiarly, is considering -- finally, thank the good Lord -- doing what’s best for the district he has represented so well for so long. He’s thinking about abandoning that crazy 12-year term limit he so foolishly promised way back when.

The U.S. Congress, like most legislative bodies in the western world, is structured on a committee system that reflects its members’ seniority. So it’s only after an incumbent has built up a fair amount of seniority that he or she can begin doing really good things with relative ease for the folks back home.

Bob Goodlatte -- now with 10 years under his belt, a dozen after this next assured term -- is in the majority party. And since it’s in the majority party where most of the kudos are found in a committee system based on seniority, it’s a factor not to be considered lightly.

Goodlatte serves on three plum House committees, each of which is good for the 6th District.

He is the seventh-ranked Republican on the 37-member House Judiciary Committee, the same all-important committee where not-so-minor things like presidential impeachment charges are first aired. This also is the domain where Goodlatte is currently laboring away for common-sense litigation reform.

He ranks third among the 27 Republicans and 24 Democrats on the Agriculture Committee, where he chairs a subcommittee overseeing forestry -- certainly a post important to both the hikers and choppers who help balance the economy of his heavily wooded district.

And he recently was put on the Education and Workforce Committee, where he can be a friend in deed as well as when in need to the 22 colleges and universities (more than in any other congressional district in the nation) and the thousands of manufacturers he represents.

So why Bob Goodlatte -- whose seniority increasingly allows him to deliver good things to the 6th District -- would think for even a second about not running beyond 2004 is a mystery.

If he were out of step with the makeup of his farmers-and-fabricators district -- à la Rick Boucher, that Clinton apologist extraordinaire in the southwest’s conservative 9th District -- then one may be wishing him to hold true to his faddish early-’90s pledge.

But that’s not the case here. Goodlatte fits his district like an old, comfortable shoe. He is a conservative Republican who rides high on the shoulders of hundreds of thousands of conservative mountain-and-valley Republicans.

Don’t think he’s popular? Ask “Congressman Bowers.”

Don’t think he’s effective and, thus, unbeatable? Ask the Democrats who haven’t put up an opponent now in two successive elections.

Term limits -- and the promise of them -- are silly. They are just not practical in a political system where one’s ability to deliver goodies is dependent (probably too dependent) on seniority.

Shame on Bob Goodlatte for ever even suggesting an exodus after 12 measly years. Just what was he thinking?

Goodlatte for Congress.

Again and again and again ...

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