All the entrants to the Virginia Senate race are now in place. Although we Virginia voters have more options than one has a right to expect, that doesn't mean any of the choices are happy ones. But happy or not, I have decided how I'm going to vote in November: I'll vote for whoever, on the eve of the election, looks most likely to deny this Senate seat to Oliver North. Right now, it looks probable that the recipient of my anyone-but-North vote will be the Democratic incumbent, Chuck Robb. Robb, of course, has a character problem: his straight-arrow Marine image has been tarnished by evidence of a lack of principle in both his private and public lives. But I do not hold with those who equate Robb's foibles with the public record of Oliver North. Even if my politics were those candidate North is espousing, I would be afraid of his gaining political power. I do not think Oliver North is the man he pretends to be. And his dishonesty, unlike Robb's, is specifically political in nature. What makes North dangerous is that he has the gifts of a great demagogue, the gift of manipulating people's angers and resentments, of harnessing the passions of "Us vs. Them" politics to aggrandize his own power and position. Judging another person's character is inescapably a matter of one's individual intuition, and my strong intuition about Oliver North --based on all I've seen and heard in the eight years since he became a public figure-- is that he is fundamentally a deceiver. Even if North were saying what I want to hear, I would not trust his words. A career Marine in uniform who would take pride in lying to Congress, I figure, will be just as willing to deceive his followers. Even if I relished the prospect of one more Senate vote in the conservative column, I would not think it worth the risk of placing such a man just one step away from the White House. It may seem unlikely now that such a man could ever be elected president, but who can be sure that there will be no future time so stressful that a gifted demagogue could not ride a white horse into the presidency? Looking at Chuck Robb, I may wonder if he's forgotten where he checked his soul, but I don't worry what he'll do with his political power: uninspired, unoriginal, but basically dependable. It's the kind of man whose crime is his politics --like Russia's Zhirinofsky, or like a U.S. Marine who can ride his felonies into political prominence-- who worries me. A character problem is one thing; a dangerous character is quite another. If, by election even, my fellow Virginians have made Robb seem irrelevant to the race, I'd be willing to vote for either the independent Democrat, Doug Wilder, or the independent Republican, Marshall Coleman, if without any particular enthusiasm. Next year I don't expect to be delighted with my junior Senator. But if it's not Senator North, I'll be content.

A character problem is one thing, a dangerous character is quite another.

Andrew Bard Schmookler lives in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and is working on his next book, Fault Lines: A Trek Across the Distressed Moral Landscape of American Society Today.