Allen's Advisers Try Mute-Button Strategy

The Allen campaign used the technique last week, when staffers hastily called a news conference with Allen and Republican Sen. John W. Warner to respond to an earlier Webb news conference about the failures of the Iraq war.

The result: Allen was asked a handful of questions, and reporters were not permitted to ask follow-up questions. The phones of reporters who the campaign believed would ask tough questions were simply kept on mute the entire time.

In addition, the campaign has become even more cryptic when it comes to Allen's public schedule. Reporters know every appearance that is planned for his wife, Susan, but often are kept in the dark about the senator's schedule.

In Allen's defense, he still occasionally stops and answers a question or two while campaigning. And there have been some bizarre questions asked of him.

Peggy Fox , a television reporter and panelist for the debate sponsored by Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce, asked him about his mother's Jewish heritage, prompting a week-long news story. It should not seem startling that any candidate would want to avoid surprise questions.

But that's what politicians do when they get elected: deal with the questions that come their way. Allen, in fact, has been one of the more open senators at the Capitol, often stopping to answer questions while his colleagues go to great lengths to avoid the press corps.

Now, though, it seems that Allen has decided that a Rose Garden strategy -- in which he hunkers down and avoids tough questions for the rest of the race -- may be the only way to ensure that he returns to Capitol Hill.

It may work. And the media's griping about it certainly won't elicit sympathy from the public, which tends to dislike reporters about as much it does tax collectors.

But the real victim could be voters, who will have to make up their minds about whom to vote for on Nov. 7 based almost exclusively on prepackaged, scripted comments from Allen.

That's a shame.