Real work starts now

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.

In many respects, McDonnell’s fate is not his own so much as the country’s. He hopes to have Virginia ready for an economic recovery that might delay in coming. If that proves to be the case, he will be hard-pressed to be the jobs governor he has proclaimed himself, wearing the title as mantra over the course of more than a year of campaigning for the job he won Tuesday night.

So long as the economy remains stalled so too would be his plan to bridge an almost $1-billion transportation funding gap, since many of his ideas require increased revenues, which figure to continue dwindling. Selling state liquor stores is a dandy concept and a right one, but that alone won’t produce sufficient, sustainable money for roads.

Once he settles into the Governor’s Mansion, McDonnell will be primarily tasked with wielding sharp objects with precision, cutting into a budget that has been slashed to ribbons already. His predecessor, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, has done many things poorly and, mysteriously, without personal political consequence, making a routine of turning in budgets with revenue projections hatched, ostensibly at least, from a mix of fantasy and whimsy. But Kaine has navigated well sticky rounds of cuts this year, inspiring unrighteous indignation over rest stop closures but sparing K-12 education, no small feat.

McDonnell’s trick will be to do the same and to resist the impulse to attempt pleasing all of his pals, a mission impossible. And if the economy staggers still, he’ll also be tempted to try appeasing his foes as his popularity sags, as invariably it does for any politician at the helm of a battered vessel. That’s a mission still more impossible. It might well be McDonnell’s fate, at least in his first year or two, simply to weather storms and keep the state’s finances in a semblance of order while mitigating rather than eliminating the agony of the knife. That will require a toughness in him we’re not yet sure he has, though we’re hopeful. This is what makes leaders of men.

Here in Waynesboro, the job is simpler. Stephanie Beverage has been elected city treasurer. Principally, taxpayers want their money managed properly and they want evidence of that in the form of clean audits, something the city’s lacked for four years. That requires not reversing a national recession but competent, professional performance.

Voters have spoken, changing parties at the top of state government in Richmond and dispatching an incumbent treasurer in City Hall. Now it’s time for new representatives to do their parts. The real work begins now and in earnest.