From prediction to reality

I’ve heard the saying "If you can imagine it, it can happen" many times, but never thought about much it until last week. That’s when two things happened that made me remember predictions I had made in earlier columns. Both involve the presidential election.

At the end of October 2000, George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st president, made a quick trip to Bluefield, W.Va., to garner support for his son’s bid for the presidency. I went to that rally to see the former president and to write about the extraordinary visit. It was unusual for a high-profile politician to venture south of Beckley -- they seem to think the state stops there.

It was also unusual that the politician was a Republican. In the Democratic-dense state, most serious candidates belong to the majority party and a Republican presidential nominee rarely carries West Virginia.

The elder Bush must have stoked my imagination when he said that West Virginia was a pivotal state, that his son needed the votes and support of its people, that the state would be important in selecting the 43rd president of the United States.

I wrote, "We will have to wait to see if Mercer County and West Virginia do go Republican. We will have to wait to see if the race is so close that the five electoral votes from the state of West Virginia are the feather that moves the scales in either candidate’s direction."

West Virginia could have been the feather that tipped the scale in Democratic nominee Al Gore’s favor. He needed 270 electoral votes to win the presidency; he had 267. West Virginia’s five could have carried him to the White House and saved the country from the post-election melee.

Stirring my memory of this prophecy was something that West Virginia Sen. Robert C. Byrd wrote in his book, Losing America.

In defending Gore’s lightly scheduled West Virginia campaign, which didn’t make it to the Bluefield end of the Mountain State, Byrd writes, "I had campaigned in West Virginia with Vice President Al Gore. Candidate [George W.] Bush had been in West Virginia making promises to the coal and steel industries, and he was making inroads. I had told Gore that he risked losing West Virginia’s five electoral votes if he did not moderate his views on environmental issues. West Virginia is a heavy-industry state, with an economy largely dependent on coal and steel. Gore publicly promised to work for balance on environmental issues, but the pledges came too late. In the end, West Virginia went for Bush. Those five electoral votes could have handed Gore the presidency, a rueful thought that’s stayed with me as I have watched events unfold."

For the current presidential election, Democrats John Kerry and John Edwards are taking no chances with West Virginia’s electoral votes. While most prognosticators have shaded in West Virginia with a pink tint, denoting Bush and Dick Cheney’s weak hold, the Kerry/Edwards ticket threatens to turn the pink to blue. As usual, none of the candidates has found his way to Bluefield, but all have visited the state so many times that security costs have reached $250,000.

To ward off the unthinkable happening twice, a Republican carrying the state, Byrd has joined the campaign. He doesn’t have tons of campaigning experience because it’s something he doesn’t have to do much. The aging senator is considered a god in West Virginia with honors and accolades that usually accumulate after death. There are highways, buildings, bridges and statues named for him already.

A senator since 1958, he’s been third in line for the presidency as president pro tem twice, has served as chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee and now is the ranking Democrat on that committee. He’s famous for his knowledge of the Constitution, a copy of which he carries in his pocket most of the time, and his devotion to history, not only American, but also world, both modern and ancient.

Byrd may be more famous for the pork projects that he sends to West Virginia. As I was checking out at Borders in Charlotte, N.C., the clerk looked at the book and said, "Senator Byrd has moved everything he can out of Washington and into West Virginia."

But little of that has made its way to Bluefield. And neither has Byrd, who campaigned for Kerry in Beckley last week. His words in the newspaper jogged my memory about another prediction I had made.

In May, I wrote: "Will yard signs go the way of political badges, pens, and bumper stickers, becoming memorabilia you find mainly in collectibles stores? Or will they mutate, becoming fliers that find their way into church bulletins tucked between a pamphlet about missions in China and the menu for Wednesday night supper?"

At church last Sunday, I opened the bulletin and found an insert: It was tucked in between one for Virginia Missions and a Ladies Night Out at the Mayflower Restaurant. "Voting Your Values" was the theme of the brochure that urged people of faith to register to vote and then vote for the person who mirrored their beliefs.

Polls show that the majority of people who attend church vote Republican. At the Beckley rally, Byrd denounced the idea saying "the Bush administration had improperly hijacked the issue of faith."

"No one side has the market on Christianity or belief in God," he said. Inspiring him to go on the attack was a Republican campaign brochure, suggesting that Kerry, if elected, "would lead an attempt to ban the Bible." Byrd called the insinuation "trash and a lie," for "the Constitution would never let the Bible be banned."

I guess the lesson to be learned from all this is "If you don’t want something to happen, you better not say it."