3 up 3 down for the week

Readying to slink off into the night, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine continues to bustle about the business of securing future employment. He has signed on for a part-time teaching gig at the University of Richmond to be coupled with his work as Democratic National Committee chairman.

Dispensing with the obvious, that being the necessity of replacing Waynesboro’s treasurer, Stephanie Beverage soon must begin with something ostensibly more complex: figuring out how to keep the state auditor off her back. As she attempts this, the City Council might consider how to right the office permanently.

Having initiated his campaign for governor shortly after authoring a famous 1989 thesis, Robert F. McDonnell has concluded the facile phase of his quest. Now he learns whether he’ll suffer the torment of Gilgamesh, watching the plant of life swallowed by the devilish details of running a state stuck in a mire of red and sinking deeper.

Meteorologists, correct on occasion, say conditions will be favorable today for voters to venture from their homes and select mostly from guys with perfect hair as representatives to serve for the next four years. Here in the central Shenandoah Valley, it will be partly cloudy with highs near 60. For President Barack Obama looking on from the capital, it might be decidedly chillier. If it’s fall, leaves and the electorate’s mood must be changing.

Lovers of politics are rare souls in an era when politicians in the mind’s eye of the public lurk somewhere near the river bottom with old tires, lawyers, mercury, journalists and other foul stuff. Still, the election in two days ought at least to get points – and, hopefully, turnout — for intrigue.

This week’s opinion marketplace

Virginians with health insurance who review their statements often look at the bottom line and ask, “How much?”

James Madison University’s leveling of charges against two student journalists raises troubling concerns over press freedom.

Few of the choices on ballots next week will be more clear-cut than the one for Staunton sheriff. Something of an authority on this is the fellow challenging incumbent Alex Caldwell Jr. for the job.

Ben Cline was born on the plains, in Stillwater, Okla., where strong values are as rich as the crude that pulses underground in that part of the world, and he was raised in Rockbridge County, where tradition runs as thick as the woods in Jefferson National Forest.

None of the options especially appeals, but write-in Jim Serba is the best of the four candidates for treasurer.

An unfortunate son, either of Philadelphia or Richmond, will stride into Timothy M. Kaine’s shortening shadow in January and perhaps thereafter wonder who won in November. Rumblings emanating from the capital, previously and painfully accurate, are that Virginia will begin the year staring across a budget canyon of $3 billion. Hell to the chief.

Seizing lines to which her party sticks, Jody M. Wagner embodies a lost year for Democrats. The transportation plan championed by gubernatorial frontman Robert F. McDonnell and his pal Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling won’t work, she says, and worse (horrors!), it will steal money from classrooms and force teachers into soup kitchens.

Only Dostoevsky’s Karmazovs and middle-aged married couples know how to fight like this. To hear Ken Cuccinelli tell it, Steve Shannon is too doltish to be attorney general. To hear Shannon tell it, Cuccinelli is too rabidly red for the job. Pass the pestle, Mitya, and take out the trash.

Green is a delightful color, so much so that Democrats are positively blinded by it. Mantras have shifted slightly with the winds, but not the hues of beloved modifiers. Green energy was the thing when gas prices gushed past $4 a gallon. Now that job losses persist amid talk of recovery, the words “green jobs” jump from Democrats’ lips with reflexive regularity.  Tap a Democrat’s knee and he or she involuntarily shouts, “Green jobs!”

The preternaturally bland Steve Landes views his political career as that of a slogger trudging through legislative thickets whittling away tax and regulatory weeds. Accountants and morticians are peppier. Regardless then of the results of next month’s election, Greg Marrow has accomplished something: The state House District 25 incumbent is riled and ready to rumble. This is Landes as few have seen him.

So the deal with the frog in the cauldron is that the poor fellow doesn’t notice the water getting warmer because the change is gradual rather than sudden. This does not explain why some in Waynesboro can feel the temperature rising but sit contentedly while the water bubbles.

Another campaign, mercifully, is edging toward fruition only to give way to another, a process less like the changing of the seasons, which are a delight, and more like modern multimedia, which are edging toward delirium, like a maze of slot machines in some cheap Vegas casino, all flashing lights and buttons but no winners. One campaign ends and another begins, the lines fade to nonexistence, so the ends and beginnings are lost and forgotten, and power passes from one party to the next and back again, and the people who still play do so in the role of suckers, pulling levers in vain hope of hitting a jackpot on a machine rigged never to pay a dime.

This week’s opinion marketplace

Fourth-graders are not progressing in their capacity to perform rudimentary arithmetic, mirroring a malady that long has afflicted Democrats. The results for schoolkids came in Wednesday from federally funded achievement tests, and for Democrats a day earlier with the passage of a Senate Finance Committee health care bill to the sound of triumphant cries among the vacuous left.

Really? Now, Del. Landes?

Steve Landes clearly has noticed that he has a challenger in the House District 25 race, which presumably has something to do with the bill he announced Monday.

Prospects for a Republican sweep in the state’s marquee races brighten almost by the minute as Democrats struggle against drags at the top of the state and national parties. R. Creigh Deeds and President Barack Obama look like a dating service mismatch, each racing for the door as though fleeing an unwanted goodnight kiss.

Kimberly Watters gazes at PowerPoint images depicting her former city’s regeneration, and she is stirred to a kind of sunniness seen here with ecliptical irregularity, which is to say, not often. “It happened there,” Watters says, “it can happen here.”

This week’s opinion marketplace

Amid the gathering malaise of the post-euphoria era of Barack Obama’s presidency, trouble is afoot in Afghanistan. The commander of allied forces there wants more troops. Obama is disinclined to give them. Listen closely and one can hear echoes of the Soviet Union. Failure knocks and America opens the door.

Out come the defenders of Waynesboro’s treasurer candidates and in strides another runner, all while a puddle of muddle remains over who ought to manage the city’s books.

A man reared on a hog and cattle farm in Bath County, R. Creigh Deeds, and by implication, those weighing whether to side with him, confront a hound dog’s quandary, this one over what to do if the thing chased is caught.

Here’s the dilemma Waynesboro voters face: A month from today, they’ll vote for treasurer. Sophie’s choice was less murky.

Francis Chester, a Churchville lawyer and sheep farmer, returned to a favorite place this week.