Ollie’s Big Day

It was another page out of the long history of paranoia in American politics. There, before an enormous American flag, stood a former Marine lieutenant colonel, indicted in a court of law for breaking the laws of his country, wrapped by his sponsor in the mantle of Jesus of Nazareth, cheered by the dewy-cheeked graduates of a minor Christian college in southwestern Virginia as eight of their number belted out “From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli.”

Oliver L. North could be forgiven for mistaking himself for the Conquering Hero. The Rev. Jerry Falwell had cooked up an apparently irresistible brew of politics and patriotism and religion. North took to it like a parched man. His resentful voice barely concealing a sob of outrage, he called his indictment a “badge of honor” and declared he had been slandered and vilified. The wretched Congress whose laws he is accused of breaking is the arch enemy; the Contras in Nicaragua are the suffering saints waiting to be redeemed: Congress has been “turning its back” on the “weary freedom fighter in Nicaragua” who “wears a cross around his neck (and) carries a prayer in his heart: Do not forget us, do not forsake us, do not fail us.”

Very theatrical, very melodramatic. “Ollie for Congress,” “Ollie for President” slogans are sprouting already. Falwell claims to have 600,000 names on a petition asking President Reagan to pardon North.

But we suspect that neither a North crusade nor a North pardon will play very well for the great majority of Americans, who most of the time have a pretty sharp nose for buncombe.