Pumping money from his first divorce settlement into his campaign, Warner eked out a narrow victory over a lackluster Democratic opponent. Expectations were low. "Doonesbury" cartoonist Garry Trudeau ridiculed Warner in a strip as "some dim dilettante who managed to buy, marry and luck his way into the Senate," and a Pat Oliphant cartoon in the old Washington Star showed Warner, who owned a farm in Virginia's hunt country, riding the "thoroughbred" Taylor to victory.

But Warner proved adept at politics. As Hillary Clinton did in 2001, Warner initially kept his head down in the Senate, fearing his celebrity would prove a liability. He worked hard to build bridges with his Virginia congressional colleagues of both parties, and he and Taylor stayed off the party circuit and away from the paparazzi.

The worst fears of conservatives who believed Warner owed his seat to them were confirmed in 1987, when Warner voted against Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court. But voters -- especially in the more urbane Virginia suburbs of Washington -- were increasingly pleased with the senator; Warner won reelection in 1984 with 70 percent of the vote and in 1990 with 81 percent. In 1993, he angered conservatives again when he refused to endorse the candidacy of Christian conservative and home-schooling advocate Michael Farris for state lieutenant governor.

Warner's most devastating blow to Virginia conservatives came the following year, when he not only opposed but actively worked to defeat Republican Senate candidate Oliver North, who was challenging Democratic Sen. Charles Robb of Virginia. North and his former boss John Poindexter -- who had risen to become national security advisor to President Reagan -- were conservative heroes for their leading roles in the Iran-Contra affair, in which they illegally diverted the proceeds of secret arms sales to Iran to fund the anti-Communist Contras in Nicaragua. Warner found North's candidacy so repugnant that he pushed an independent candidate, Marshall Coleman, to run, and campaigned heavily for him. For Warner, who values conviviality and consensus, the clash with Poindexter, his erstwhile subordinate, was painful, but he was determined. North, in his view, was a liar who had tracked mud on the Constitution in pursuit of a rogue foreign policy. Indeed, Coleman drew enough Republican support from North to ensure Robb's reelection. Again, the voters were pleased: In 2002 Warner had no Democratic opponent and was reelected with 84 percent of the vote.

Nearly a decade after the showdown with North, Warner would clash once more with Poindexter. As Armed Services Committee chairman in 2003, he ordered an end to Poindexter's Total Information Awareness program, a massive terrorist-tracking database being developed for the Defense Department that critics called Big Brother in action. Warner, in his more understated way, labeled it simply an "egregious error of judgment."

It remains to be seen what impact the Armed Services hearings on Abu Ghraib will ultimately have. But the motivation of the panel's chairman, who has been involved with the armed forces in various capacities for 60 years, is clear. In a statement that could as easily have described his reasons for scuttling Marine Lt. Col. North's Senate bid, Warner kicked off the panel's hearings last month with a simple explanation for why the prison abuse must be thoroughly investigated. "It contradicts all the values we Americans learn," he said, adding: "This is not the way for anyone who wears the uniform of the United States of America to conduct themselves."

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