Are, Too

It's hard to make out, because the video is fuzzy. The copy I obtained was originally recorded off a television using VHS in 1993 and then transferred to a second tape, further degrading the quality. But, once you know what it is, it makes sense. It sits folded on a bookcase of trophies and bric-a- brac behind George Allen, who is seated at a desk in his home office. It's right there next to the fax machine. You can see the red field. You can make out the diagonal blue bar. And you can see what looks like a white star. It is the Confederate flag, and it appears in the very first ad that Allen broadcast in 1993, when he ran for governor."The ad ran in the beginning of his campaign, when we were introducing him," says Allen's 1993 media consultant, Greg Stevens, who made the spot. Stevens denies that the flag was purposefully added to the scene, which lasts for ten seconds of the 60-second commercial, to appeal to pro-Confederate voters. "To be honest, this spot helped him enormously, and it had nothing to do with the Confederate flag," Stevens says, adding that any criticism about "a Confederate flag supposedly put there to subtly suggest to people that he is a Confederate" is "horseshit, and you can quote me on that." Allen's communications director, press secretary, and deputy press secretary did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this article. Images of Allen are like a Civil War version of Where's Waldo, with the Confederate flag replacing the bespectacled cartoon character. First, as The New Republic reported last week, there's the senior class photo from Palos Verdes High School with Allen wearing a Confederate flag pin ("Pin Prick," May 8). Now we learn that the Confederate flag appears as a decoration in Allen's first statewide ad, even though he has long maintained that the flag did not adorn his home after 1992. Some conservatives have recently argued that the revelations about Allen's high school photo are irrelevant because the picture is so old. "[I]f we're going to scrutinize people's high school records as we vet them for public office, nobody gets to run," columnist Kathleen Parker wrote last week. But, as revealed by the 1993 campaign ad--as well as the accounts of Allen associates now stepping forward--his embrace of the Confederate flag is even more extensive than tnr previously reported. According to his colleagues, classmates, and published reports, Allen has either displayed the flag--on himself, his car, inside his home--or expressed his enthusiastic approval of the emblem from approximately 1967 to 2000. After his Confederate flag pin-wearing days in Palos Verdes, Allen attended the University of Virginia from 1971 to 1977. According to two law school classmates and one undergraduate classmate, Allen displayed the flag on his pickup truck while at UVA. "I can independently confirm," Allen law school classmate Don Cornwell writes in an e-mail, "as can hundreds of my classmates at the UVA Law School, that for the three years that George was there he drove an old pickup truck with notably newer Confederate flags on the bumpers. George and his truck was sort of a running joke in the law school." According to a little-noticed 1993 Los Angeles Times article, Allen also displayed the flag in his room at UVA--a university where it was an explosive issue. According to the school newspaper, one of the hot debates on campus in 1971 was over students displaying the Confederate flag at football games, a spectacle that caused a near-race riot at one game, prompting the school to temporarily ban the flag from all athletic events. It would have been hard for Allen to miss this controversy: He was a quarterback on the football team. Allen's fetish for Dixie did not wane after UVA. When he was a member of the House of Delegates from 1983 to 1991, Allen was known for his interest in the Confederacy. According to Clint Miller--a Republican who served with Allen in the Virginia House and later ran against him in the gubernatorial primary-- while discussing a Civil War battle at a subcommittee meeting, Allen referred to Northerners as "Yankees." A woman agitated by the remark rose and retorted, "Young man, I'll have you know that those people that you referred to as the Yankees--that was the United States Army." In the '80s, Allen lived in a cabin in Earlysville, Virginia, where he famously displayed the Confederate flag in his living room. Allen has long argued that the flag in his cabin was simply part of a collection. "I have flags from many countries, many states," Allen told me in a recent interview. "I have a Betsy Ross flag, the Virginia flag, the Mexican flag, the Portuguese flag, the Canadian flag, and the Confederate flag, and I just collect flags." Now that it is known that Allen displayed the Confederate flag on himself, his cars, and in his homes since the late '60s, the "flag collection" explanation, first peddled the year he ran for governor, seems hollow. After all, according to his own campaign commercial, Allen seems not to have disavowed the flag so much as simply removed it from his wall and placed it on his bookshelf. And that's not the only evidence of his peculiar views of the Confederacy. In 1995, according to The Washington Post, Allen "referred to his neighboring state as `the counties that call themselves West Virginia,' evoking the old argument that their decision to secede and stay with the Union was illegal." In 1995, 1996, and 1997, Allen issued a proclamation drafted by the Sons of Confederate Veterans celebrating April as Confederate History and Heritage Month. The document made no mention of slavery. His successor, Republican Governor James Gilmore, repudiated Allen's proclamation and wrote a more balanced version that denounced slavery. Under educational guidelines proposed by Allen's administration, which were revised after an uproar, students would have been taught that slaves were "settlers." As recently as 2000, Allen still publicly expressed support for the Confederate flag. A Post reporter accompanying Allen at an event in Virginia captured this scene: "When one man at the Pork Festival said to Allen, `Long live the Confederate flag!' he replied, `You got it!'" On the right, a debate is now brewing about what Allen's four-decade embrace of the Confederate flag means for his presidential ambitions. Some are bothered by the revelations. At the influential conservative website Redstate.com, the blogger TheCollegian, who volunteered for Allen in 1993, writes, "George Allen did not simply adopt an affection for the South, but the South at a certain time: a time when it was fighting to keep slavery legal. Even this would be ok if he had some family tie to the region at that time, but he doesn't. I find that to be disturbing." But there's a second view. It is best expressed to me by Stevens, now a consultant to John McCain. He argues strenuously that I should not write a piece about Allen and the Confederate flag. He says it would be unfair to Allen. But, when I explain Allen's record on the issue, he makes another argument that has nothing to do with fairness, and I figure out why he is so forceful. "Well, you also realize you're getting him votes for the primary, right?" Stevens says, alluding to key states in the South. He raises his voice to a shout: "You're getting him votes! Big time!"

By ryan lizza