McDonnell gets the nod

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.

For the past four months, since the June 9 Democratic primary, the campaign for governor has been focused on two veteran state political players, Robert F. McDonnell and R. Creigh Deeds. That fact appears to have been lost on the latter. The state senator from Bath County has lobbied for the top job with the stuperous ardor and predictable inefficacy of a drunken brawler. And still we ponder a question, why Mr. Deeds?

His answer is that McDonnell, the Republican who bested Deeds in 2005 for attorney general, wrote a thesis 20 years ago opining on the ills of working women, homosexuals and contraceptives. McDonnell’s answer to this is that he’s hired plenty of women and been supportive of his daughter, a platoon leader in Iraq. His views, he says, have changed on some issues, meaning, principally, he’s softened rather than altered. And McDonnell’s base says amen.

Answers from Deeds, meanwhile, elude, specifically in the area of rudimentary questions, such as: what might he do as governor? Ask this and the senator, not known for eloquence, turns taciturn.

Here, McDonnell shines, not so much for the luster of his vision but for the volume of it. His transportation plan is a policy stew, selling off state liquor stores, an idea long past its time; taking out bonds, borrowing money against the hope that revenues will pay the bills; and tolling roads, an idea that pays off as regularly as a lottery ticket. Deeds, firm in saying he either would or would not raise gas taxes to pay for road improvements, whines inanely that McDonnell would take money from education to fund transportation. His logic, widely applied, would eliminate every other state agency, a concept more appealing than his candidacy.

Deeds is more detailed on the subject of the economy, saying he would establish job credits from small businesses and job training grants for college students and, naturally, that he would push green jobs through a solar manufacturing grant program. McDonnell similarly touts job credits, a plan to make the lieutenant governor (presumably, Bill Bolling, the Republican incumbent) the state’s jobs czar and a philosophical bent to oppose jobs-killing increases in taxes and fees on business.

The latter is especially important given the pre-existing fiscal condition the next governor will inherit. McDonnell takes stands. Deeds wiggles. A sure, steady hand is what Virginia needs. McDonnell offers this. Deeds offers the steadiness of Jell-O. A precipitous budgetary fall awaits amid lingering economic travails. McDonnell is the best of the two candidates to halt the descent and aid Virginia’s eventual rise from the present dark night.