Allen Manages to Create a Diversion

Still, the Allen camp is hardly home free. Allen's lawyer has admitted this week that the senator failed to disclosed to Congress stock options he received after serving as a director of Commonwealth Biotechnologies Inc., a Virginia company. And even once the bleeding from macaca and the racial slurs was stanched, Allen seemed to remain on the wrong side of public opinion on the Iraq war.

Allen had taken the harshest imaginable, least independent stance in favor of the Bush policy in Iraq: Everything was going fine, no need to pull out, no need to second-guess the war effort. But now, he has used this shift in the campaign's subject matter to change direction. Here's George Allen tacking to the center, alertly taking advantage of Sen. John Warner's conversion to the skeptical side. In a conference call with reporters Friday, Allen awkwardly embraced his fellow Virginian's assessment that things are going poorly in Iraq.

Never mind that Allen's new stance -- the war is a failure, but we have to stay the course -- makes little sense. And Allen didn't go quite as far as Warner, who said that if U.S. forces don't show major progress in 30 to 60 days, it will be time for "bold action," presumably the old Monty Python battle call: "Run away!"

Despite the logical holes in his new position, Allen manages to come off as more independent and honest than many Republicans, such as Maryland Senate candidate Michael Steele (who resorted to a thinly veiled off-the-record lunch to slip in his critical comments about his party's failed foreign policy).

How has Allen been permitted to do all this? Why hasn't the Webb campaign taken advantage of the moment to raise further questions about Allen's credibility and character? Where are the stories trying to square the young man who relished using racial slurs with the senator who went on pilgrimages to absorb the story of the civil rights movement? How did Allen grow up to hold the archaic racial attitudes he seems to have proudly displayed through much of his life? What have his professional relationships with blacks been like through the years?

George Allen runs a savvy campaign and knows how to work the media and public opinion. But we still don't know what really goes on in the heart and head of Virginia's junior senator. Who will demand answers to these questions -- the Webb campaign? Editors and reporters? Virginia's voters?

E-mail:marcfisher@washpost.com