Centrism safe approach

Whatever compromise it might engender, politics is more artful than art, evidenced by the ritual whir of campaign spin and a resulting diffusion of rhetorical miasma thick enough to slice. This explains the scenario that has Republican gubernatorial contender Bob McDonnell and Democratic foe R. Creigh Deeds drifting toward that gooey locus known as the center, chanting om and drawing near one another, philosophically now and maybe at the polls later, like last time.

To which we say: Um, yeah ... not so much.

The thinking which infuses reporting almost everywhere on the subject has two parts. First, it goes that McDonnell is dispensing with the dread social conservatism that plagues his party and would plague him, too, in pursuit of a centrism that resonates with voters who have better to do than fret over, say, abortion or gay marriage. Secondly, Deeds, a senator from the Bath County sticks, is a certifiable moderate who likes guns, digs country music and even got an endorsement from the National Rifle Association, for crying out loud. The candidates, in other words, stand apart, but not so very far.

Except for the gulf flowing between them.

Neither McDonnell nor Deeds wants cast to the perceived ideological nether reaches, a place where right-wing conspiracy theorists and wild-eyed leftists somehow meet, somewhere off the grid and off the reservation. Both candidates covet independents, for whom pragmatism is an ideal. That being definable as doing what works, conservatives long have contended that on questions fiscal, they know better what to do than their philosophical foes. Here, McDonnell contends, is a place where a divide between him and Deeds forms.

On subjects pragmatic, none looms larger than the economy. Sensing as much, McDonnell has made this a centerpiece of his campaign. McDonnell vows he’ll govern on traditional conservative principles, putting a lid on taxes, limiting regulation’s spread, whittling red tape and restraining government spending, which the succession of previous Democratic governors have serially expanded.

So what of Deeds? Republicans have made small political hay out of the fact that his campaign Web site features an issues section that lists neither a jobs nor an economy category. But Deeds has a mantra, and it is familiar. He touts job training and, of course, green jobs, something McDonnell also mentions. We don’t doubt green jobs will be out there for the taking and that Virginia should seek its share. We doubt the practicality of the green movement given the current economic circumstances and alternative energy’s narrow capacity.

Deeds also could be counted upon to pursue increased taxes. He’s called repeatedly for raising the state’s gas tax to pay for badly needed transportation fixes in Northern Virginia. McDonnell chafes at the suggestion that this at least shows a clear vision for how Deeds would cover transportation costs. “Creigh doesn’t have a plan,” McDonnell said. Businesses surely would chafe at the tendency to tax and then spend.

Other differences typical of the candidates’ parties persist, some relegated to the campaign’s subconscious. McDonnell rejoiced, for example, over the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court’s recent decision upholding the state’s partial-birth abortion ban, for which he fought and which Deeds now opposes. Such things, McDonnell knows well, are important in the central Shenandoah Valley, where hues still hew red though shades elsewhere appear to be turning grayer. McDonnell dare not bear in mind the latter while forgetting the former.

“I’m pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, pro-marriage,” McDonnell says, brandishing conservative credentials where they matter. He concedes a shift in campaign emphasis to the economy and jobs but not from the conservative philosophy that has centered his political thinking and career. That calls for limiting government’s reach into the private sector. At a time when free enterprise is being systematically dismantled at the federal level at a staggering cost to generations present and future, the ideological distinctions are especially vivid and significant. McDonnell hopes voters notice.