Slightly built, tirelessly energetic and topped by a meticulously styled ’do that could belong only to a politician or an anchorman, Robert F. McDonnell looks more marathoner than statesman, and in that sense hopes to run again after a week of staggering. Platforms for re-launching a gubernatorial bid that once sailed, but now drifts, arise this week, first on Monday with the traditional Labor Day campaign kickoff and later in the week when Gov. Timothy M. Kaine is expected to announce $1.5 billion in budget cuts.

This week’s opinion marketplace

Pressed between hard places, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine is setting about making choices made of similar texture, saw in hand, as he labors to bridge a $1.5-billion budget gap.

After the Democrat spent much of the summer throwing fists at the air, Robert F. McDonnell did what R. Creigh Deeds could not, planting a hard punch on the Republican’s jaw. McDonnell’s misfortune is that he happens to be that Republican.

A familiar bogeyman is bubbling to the surface again, the form of the thing definable by perspective. Stormwater in the eyes of those tilting left is the kid with the flu symptoms who refused to stay home, a carrier of foul pollutants. Stormwater in the eyes of those tilting right is at least small parts phantom, a mechanism for prying more money, taxes in the form of fees, from businesses already scratching for a different kind of green than environmentalists care to consider.

As the president of the United States spent the weekend wandering circles of hypocrisy and toting the stuff in book form, the place he momentarily left behind continued going to hell. The recession that he insists has all but ended persists, the health care reform he persists in pushing gasps and heaves and so too national security, which has been dropped by self-inflicted blows. On this, Barack Obama pleads powerlessness, a frightening thing.

Politics have the quality of the weather, which, according to weathered adage, can be counted upon to change.

This week’s opinion marketplace

On a hazy day in Vancouver, six weeks after having broken the mythic four-minute barrier in the mile, Roger Bannister clung desperately to the frantic pace set by an Australian rival.

Landing renovation money

Libraries are an essential element in the fabric of any community, and that’s certainly the case with the Augusta County Library in Fishersville. So it’s good news that bids on a proposed renovation there came in dramatically lower than the estimated cost of $2.4 million.

Well, there they go again. Purveyors of fear and hate and other really nasty stuff are persisting in clogging the heads of grannies and grandpas with tales of health care reform doom. Look at this: “Bills now in Congress would squeeze savings out of Medicare, a lifeline for the elderly.” And this: “I am finally scared of a White House administration ... [R]ationing is a basic part of Obama’s eventual master health care plan.” Pass the tea party placard and pack the concealed heat.

It may be observed that the Wayne Theatre, that epicenter of local political unease, persists in standing, its shiny new façade overlooking West Main Street in Waynesboro. This evidently is the product of something otherworldly, since by now the old brick edifice should have crumbled to mortar and dust.

This week’s opinion marketplace

Through summer’s sleepy days, the Waynesboro City Council has been an island of languor in a sea of monotony. Blades of grass are more restive than most council officials. But ennui has lifted. Once-familiar acrimony has been roused over the absence of activity on the streets outside the stretch of West Main running between the Wayne Theatre and the aging building formerly known as the home of The News Virginian.

No signs of intelligent life

Terrors lurk on the Queen City’s streets in the ostensibly innocuous form of sandwich boards, set up on downtown sidewalks by infidel merchants and restaurateurs to advertise such subversive stuff as the dread lunch special.

Amid the sighs of apprehensive or relieved parents and plaintive students, school buses are rumbling through the central Shenandoah Valley this morning signaling the start of classes in Augusta County.

Extremism, a popular term in the reactionary tinderbox of politics, is definable empirically only in circumstances stretching far into extremes.

THIS WEEK’S OPINION MARKETPLACE

A trio of Democrats seeking office huddled Wednesday to talk among themselves about education, providing an evening’s respite from the health care wars but not from rhetoric beaten to a pulp by the raw might of partisan twaddle. The federal No Child Left Behind law is damnable (kind of), public schools are positively starved for cash, student-teacher ratios must be kept low and hang those accursed unfunded mandates.

The president is telling the truth: Nowhere in the 615 pages making up proposed legislation in the Senate, nor in the 1,017 pages of the dread H.R. 3200, the House health care reform bill, are there references to death panels, killing grandmas or pulling plugs. Nor are there references to government takeovers, care rationing or bankrupting the federal budget. And, by the way, he still doesn’t want to run the car industry and the recession is over.

Here’s how weird the health-care debate has become: President Barack Obama and his leftist chums are linking hands with the pharmaceutical industry and Wal-Mart to push through nationalized health care.

Explaining the strategy unveiled over the weekend by R. Creigh Deeds to his pals at The Washington Post requires desperation similar to that indicated by his tactics.

In the increasingly uncomfortable realm occupied by President Barack Obama, the deepening of the economic malaise has abated, and the great plunge over the precipice has been averted.

THIS WEEK’S OPINION MARKETPLACE

Contrasts continue to strike. The Golden Corral soon will open its gates in the West End, another indicator that development will not soon abate in that section of Waynesboro where pulses still can be detected. Eastward, Roses, the discount clothing and retail store, is venturing back into Willow Oak Plaza. A smattering of small shops has opened in the vicinity.

Washington is the sort of place only Victor Hugo and a character of his crafting, the bumbling policeman Javert, could understand fully.

An especially notable distinction has emerged in Virginia’s gubernatorial race, one being watched with panting anticipation by a Republican Party desperate to pull itself off the skids.

This week’s opinion marketplace

As the president of the United States drifted from the heavens to Blountville, Tenn., and then a Kroger grocery store in Bristol, resisters wilted, deals bloomed and a path opened to a dream and a nightmare, that of nationalized heath care. The form of it is surely far more diluted than Barack Obama prefers, but systematically dismantling an economic system is no easy thing, not even for a fellow whose gifts are a mix of Chicago and the celestial.

Having been ridded of an opponent openly carrying three deadly political weapons – skill, reputation and incumbency – Erik Curren can resume meditation on something familiar to his kind, dim prospects in the state House 20th District race. He faces an authentic foe, rather than the faux brand formed by his forays into Buddhism and brandished against him by the sort of partisan friend who makes one relish enemies.