An election sans Obama

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.

A Republican sweep of the top three statewide offices is in the offing in dear old Virginia (attention, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine: notice we did not say Ol’ Virginny; you’re welcome). Gazing at walls and seeing writing, Obama has responded to Democratic gubernatorial candidate R. Creigh Deeds as though he were a swine flu carrier, his nose running and the tissues gone. The president would sooner cozy up to Bill Clinton. Ew.

It’s still a race in New Jersey, where Republican Chris Christie enters today in a dead heat with incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine. This sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen in Jersey, where the last four governors have been Democrats. Never mind that a sewer rat is cleaner than Corzine. This is Jersey for crying out loud.

Still, Corzine clings like Kaine to Obama’s tattered coattails. They chanted, “Yes we can” at rallies Sunday in the Garden State where the prez spent the day campaigning with the gov. We can what? Shack up with a union boss then shell out $6 million in a settlement with her after the breakup? Appoint an attorney general who earlier had been wanted by the cops for a long string of traffic violations? By all means, Gov. Corzine, four more years of this, please.

Home never looked so good until after a run through the Jersey headlines, which here equates to a roll through the compost pile. Customs in these parts are different. Folks vote early, but once. At least one of the state’s leading candidates is familiar with dirt, but that would be Bath County’s Deeds, from working on hog farms. If the candidates on the ticket today are guilty of anything, so far as the public knows, it’s being less sexy – evidently – than their counterparts up North. Like privilege, monotony has its advantages.

For all this, neither this election nor the one in Jersey will be a referendum on Obama. The races are distinguished from him by the particulars in both states, a shrewdly run campaign by Republicans here and Corzine’s taint there.

Judgment for Obama comes in next year’s mid-terms. Today in Virginia, the decision is about something simpler but more significant than national politics: choosing from a field of dedicated public servants — people to lead Virginia from the economic and budgetary wilderness and execute a vision to carry the state through the next four years.

That ought to be enough to spur voters to the polls, whether the sun peeks through the clouds or not. And, just to be safe, Mr. President, grab an extra blanket. We feel a cold front moving in.