Kaine stumps, budget suffers

The News Virginian
Published: October 22, 2008

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine would figure to be the more favorable of the two in a comparison to Nero, the Roman dictator. Del. William R. Janis is less sure, at least on one count.

“I think he’s abandoned any pretense of trying to be the governor,” Janis, R-Glen Allen, recently told The Washington Times, referring to Kaine . “At least Nero stayed in Rome and fiddled while it burned.”

Here are the details:

Three days after calling a news conference earlier this month to reveal that the state would lay off almost 570 workers to help narrow a $2.5 billion budget gap, Kaine jetted off to Loveland, Colo., to champion Obama, to whose coattails the governor’s attachment is surgical. This left frequent Janis contemplating the rare and limited propriety of Nero.

Driven by shiny optimism, Kaine’s counters of beans and revenues have fiddled, too. After rosy revenue estimates precipitated a budget shortfall in 2007, Kaine plucked himself from the Obama campaign trail’s grip long enough in January to announce a budget that repeated the error. In the lightless reaches of Obama’s shadow, the governor perhaps was blinded to housing’s yearlong freefall.

Against such images, Kaine chafes. His political action committee countered to The Times that he has spent just nine days outside Virginia stumping for Obama since Nov. 17, 2007. The governor considers Obama campaigning an exercise of liberty with his free time. “[I]f I want to take a night where I might be home watching TV,” Kaine told the newspaper, “[and] instead go to a campaign event or go away on a weekend, that’s the way I try to do it.”

That to which The Times only alluded, Kaine’s time spent in the state pushing Obama, is more intriguing. When Obama sets foot in Old Dominion, Kaine appears as if transported at the celestial senator’s side. How many Obama campaign appearances has Kaine made? How much time has he spent on these endeavors? What about the cost for the governor’s travels and that of his entourage traversing the commonwealth on Obama’s behalf? Who pays that bill? Here is where the story lies.

Perhaps we might overlook all this, had the governor been marginally aware of the clouds of crisis looming over his state. While many Americans were caught unawares by the severity of Wall Street’s strife, the slide of the housing market and the slip of the economy that have driven state revenue declines have been unfolding in a slow ooze for more than a year. Evidence of coming shortages appeared everywhere, except, apparently on that section of Obama’s garments that Kaine happened to clutch.

Kaine’s myopia might have cost him that which he coveted, a spot on the ticket beneath Obama. The state’s deepening budget woes came to light shortly before the Illinois senator settled on Joe Biden as his running mate. Virginia and Kaine still might win if Obama captures the presidency. Kaine is being touted for a Cabinet post. Godspeed to the governor. Let him fiddle in Washington rather than Richmond.