Henrik Ibsen’s play “An Enemy of the People,” currently showing at Washington, D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre, contains a devastating portrait of a political moderate, the kind of image now being projected onto embattled Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn.

In the play, a character named Aslaksen prates about believing in “discreet moderation ... and moderate discretion.” At first, he promises to back the protagonist, Dr. Stockman, who has discovered that their town’s water pipes and public baths – crucial to the economy – are poisoned with pollution.

But when Aslaksen discovers that repairing the system will force taxes to be raised, he turns on the doctor and backs the town’s mayor, a character who echoes Vice President Cheney, in keeping the situation secret.

Shays, the quintessential moderate Republican, is now being accused by Democrats and the media of shifting his position on Iraq out of similar expediency because he is under threat of losing his House seat.

After his August visit to Iraq, his 14th, Shays announced he now favors a timetable for withdrawing U.S. forces – a reversal of his previous stance and a seeming abandonment of President Bush, who is deeply unpopular in Connecticut.

Shays’ Democratic opponent, Diane Farrell, is seeking to tie Shays to Bush and the war; she described his shift as “an election-year conversion.” Shays added to his woes with an agonized appearance at a reporters’ breakfast sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor last week during which he said Bush “has no credibility” on the war.