PERSPECTIVE ON OLIVER NORTH : Virginia’s Folly, Not the Senate’s : There’s no litmus test for barring senators-elect, even those who’ve shown contempt for Congress and the law.

When asked about the outcome of the Virginia Republican convention that gave the U.S. Senate nomination to Oliver North, the former Marine officer and national-security aide who made his name lying to Congress, Minority Leader Bob Dole gave the appearance of a man who had just eaten a bad meal. That was on Sunday. After a few days’ reflection on the possibility that a North victory in November just might be the ticket to a Republican takeover of the Senate majority, Dole dutifully announced that he would support the upstart’s campaign.

The combination of Dole’s grudging endorsement, Virginia Sen. John Warner’s outright denunciation of North and the sullenness of even some conservatives like Arizona’s Sen. John McCain may raise hopes among liberals that the man they see as the reincarnation of Sen. Joseph McCarthy can somehow be barred from taking his Senate seat, should he win as predicted. Their reasoning? A Senate stung by charges of ethical deficiency might seek to cleanse itself by blocking the membership of a man who rose to fame and fortune with his cavalier disregard for the Constitution during the nationally televised Iran-Contra hearings.

Such hopes fly in the face of a historic aversion on the part of Congress to exclude any but the most egregious malefactors. They also clash with the spirit of the times, which holds that the last thing the Senate wants to be accused of is denying the will of the people. Then, there is the even more uncomfortable fact that a public scrutiny of the credentials of former Lt. Col. North may cause attention to be focused on the personal conduct of those who already occupy seats in the upper chamber.

There have been only 14 formal attempts to bar a senator-elect from taking his seat; three succeeded. Two cases involved failure to meet the citizenship requirements set forth in the Constitution. The third arose out of questions of disloyalty on the part of a senator from Maryland who gave $100 to his son as he went off to join the Confederate Army.

John Niles of Connecticut, who was thought to be insane by many of his colleagues, was seated in 1844, as was Mississippi’s first black senator, Hiram R. Revels, in 1870, over objections that as a former slave, he had not met the Constitution’s nine-year citizenship requirement.

There is one Senate case that involves circumstances even remotely close to those that might be raised to bar North’s being sworn in. That case, which ultimately resulted in the seating of Arthur Gould, a Maine Republican, in 1926, turned on the issue of character and a 14-year-old charge of bribery. That Gould had been acquitted played some role in the Senate’s decision to admit him. More persuasive was Gould’s argument that barring him from the Senate would deny representation to the people of Maine for the time that it would take to hold a new election.

This argument, it seems to me, would be Oliver North’s passport to the Senate should he be elected in November. The Constitution places no obstacles in front of voters who want to elect a fathead, a philanderer or a phony to the Senate of the United States. It maintains that the body should serve as the ultimate judge of the qualifications of its members, but efforts to apply any kind of moral or ethical litmus test to senators-elect have typically failed in the face of the belief that it is the voters of the state who will have to live with the folly of their choice and it is not the Senate’s place to substitute its judgment.

The current political climate might, at first glance, seem to favor a resolute stand against North, who many see as the personification of unconstitutionality. Moreover, this is a man who demonstrated calculated disrespect to the institution in which he now seeks membership. North’s entry might seem an ideal place for senators to show some backbone.

Ironically, it is North’s very insistence that he acted on principle in bamboozling Congress and the readiness of his fans to endorse his actions that give North the kind of moral unassailability that he might not have had he practiced campaign fraud or some uncharismatic felony. And every state has its share of North devotees, as every senator knows. This is particularly true in the Sunbelt. Stirring up a hornet’s nest over what would almost certainly turn out to be a losing cause is out of character for today’s gun-shy politicians. Senate obstruction of North’s admittance could be seen as one more example of an arrogant Washington Establishment flouting the wishes of the voters.

In the hearings that would attend a move to bar North, his supporters might well take malicious delight in pointing out that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy left the scene of a fatal accident and would have been brought to book in any state where prosecutors were beyond the Kennedy family’s powerful reach. Moreover, an effort to exclude North would have to forgo support from such senators as Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Joseph R. Biden, Carol Moseley-Braun, Alfonse D’Amato or John McCain, whose ethical or legal problems have been paraded before the public in recent years. To add the burden of hypocrisy to the load under which Congress already staggers would be too much even for senators who are models of rectitude.

So don’t count on the Senate to come to the rescue. Its institutional defenders will be too busy digging trenches on the home front in November to venture out into North’s political minefield.