Kaine’s veep hopes fading

The News Virginian
Published: August 13, 2008

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine longs to walk in the shadow of Barack Obama, who these days is strolling beaches in Hawaii in between raising a cool million. But as Obama’s star continues to gleam, Kaine’s is flickering. He and Virginia lawmakers are awakening to the prospect of a $1 billion budget shortfall. That which Kaine desires to escape might hold him.
Possessing a reputation as a moderate Democrat capable of forging compromise with Republicans and having cultivated symbiosis with his party’s messiah, Kaine glided to the top of the short list of potential running mates for Obama.
Then shadows formed.
On transportation, Kaine was stymied, first by constituents angered by abusive driver fees, then by the state Supreme Court disquieted by unelected regional taxing bodies and finally by Republicans unwilling to yield to his demand for $1 billion in extra taxes and fees to pay for roads. Overly optimistic revenue projections plunged the state $640 million into the red last year. And now another chasm forms, into which might fall Kaine’s hopes of riding an Obama wave as it rolls down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Kaine is partly but not fully to blame for the state’s budget woes. Virginia, like other states, has been staggered by withering blows in the form of the housing collapse, credit crisis and spiraling energy costs. None of this was his doing. The failure to rein in spending stains him, but not him alone. Republicans bear guilt, too. The problem of the gap is Kaine’s, politically and otherwise. Its timing could hardly be worse.
But Kaine’s problems extend beyond the budget into words, which in the case of political aspirations, kill. Fanning his servility to Obama, Kaine proclaimed Tuesday that the cease-fire in Georgia was the product of the junior senator’s rhetoric. “I’m very, very happy that the senator’s request for a cease-fire has been complied with.” Who knew that Russia bowed to the will of a senator from Illinois without even a full term under his belt?
Apparently not the Russian troops who looted homes and set others on fire, setting tensions back on simmer a day after France – not Obama – negotiated the truce. Kaine’s inane fawning surely did not impress Obama, who we might hope knows better, and it was roundly pilloried in the conservative blogosphere and on talk radio.
Obama, we might presume, has new questions regarding his choice of running mate, perhaps first among them: How can I reach Evan Bayh?