It's October, the scariest month of the year. At this moment, one Lt. Col. Oliver North (Ret.) is the Republican nominee for Senate in Virginia. Scared yet?

Do we give too many people a second chance? Kurt Waldheim survived his past as a Nazi to head the United Nations. Yasser Arafat has weathered a reputation as a terrorist long enough to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Alfonse D'Amato is serving out one more term, not in a penitentiary for corruption, but as New York's U.S. Senator. A couple of years ago, a former Ku Klux Klan leader as close to the governorship of Louisiana as North is to the Senate seat.

All of these men present very frightening prospects and precedents. It seems incredible that the voters in Louisiana rejected Duke for governor. After all, he was just a hate-monger, not really responsible for the deaths of hundreds. Who knows what convinced him to run in the first place, anyway?

Oliver North knows. He knows that he, like Duke before him, has more than a soldier's fighting chance. The religious right swept Duke up the first few steps to power; North is hoping that he'll make it all the way back to Washington. But don't all those crooked dealings with Iran get in the way? Not in the minds of this country's so-called "moral majority." Those words have come to mean just about nothing.

How can North and Duke get so far with such pockmarked pasts? Sure, they both have that gap-toothed charisma, but neither of them came from any side of politics except the underside. It seems that a claim to being "a good Christian"--or at least a repentant one--has become more important than any political savvy or competence. Of course, tens of millions of Americans bear this credential and amazingly resist running for high office. Maybe you also have to write a book, like North, but we have yet to see whether that will work for Dan Quayle.

The treatment of North by his political colleagues has been still more bizarre. Ronald Reagan refused early on to endorse North. Who would know Ollie's true capacity for the job better than our kindly old ex-president/king? Despite the old boss's attitude, other Republican heavyweights such as Bob Dole have flocked to Virginia to support the Dentally Deficient One.

Dole needs to support North for two big reasons: He yearns intensely for a majority in the Senate, and he needs the religious right to support him in the presidential primaries in two years. However, Dole probably won't give North the time of day if he's elected--the two of them just aren't in the same league.

Virginia needs to rebuff North's attempt to reenter the circles of government. He was fortunate enough to avoid prison time for his role in the Iran-Contra scandal; his reputation outside of his media-saturated state still reeks of duplicity. Certainly Virginia has nothing to gain on a national level by electing North. The state would go from "Home of Presidents" to "Home of Guns-for-Hostages."

So much is at stake in the world of government that it's hard to accept that anyone deserves a second chance; why not "one strike and you're out?" Jimmy Carter never got another chance--he had to make his name on the international stage. Luckily, Herbert Hoover didn't get one either.

Maybe Americans like to believe that politicians learn their lessons. We look at our imperfect selves and are pleased that our leaders make mistakes, too. When someone quietly suggests that we deserve better, the moral majority rises to embrace its mediocre kin.

Daniel Altman's column appears on alternate Mondays.