Time to do what works

Having stepped with precision across the ideological divide and resuscitated in the process an ostensibly broken conservative movement, Robert F. McDonnell pledges fealty to the pragmatism that swept him to Richmond. If that fares him so well as it did on election night, the governor-elect will have provided a formula that others in his party surely will replicate.

Principally, it is this: fret not over the base but appeal rather to the wanderers between philosophical poles. This group cares little for whether a candidate favors legalized abortion or disdains it, embraces gay marriage or flees it, abides the Constitution or seeks to remake it. The concern is singular, and it is the sort to which Ronald Reagan catered a half-generation ago, about whether one’s personal lot has improved or worsened and what answer a candidate might provoke to that question in another four years.

This is hardly a change in American politics, as Reagan’s success and that of candidates before him and since, Bill Clinton most notably, demonstrate. The philosophical test is also the same: which method is more likely to produce individual gain – limited taxes, as McDonnell favors, or increased spending, which the country is witnessing now like never before under President Barack Obama. America seems sure at the moment but less so over time.

These questions tumble into Main Street producing similar results. The city replied in 2007 by electing conservatives Tim Williams, Frank Lucente and Bruce Allen to the City Council. Earlier, the response was the opposite, establishing the former lead faction composed of Tom Reynolds, Nancy Dowdy and Lorie Smith. So it is that the city, as defined by the majority of the council, one day supports public spending on the Wayne Theatre project and another day opposes it.

Waynesboro reflects the country’s quandary. America doesn’t know who she is. Politicians in the higher reaches mirror this. Voters want to know who their politicians are. Politicians answer: Whom would you have us be?

In this town, where an election for two council seats takes place next year, pragmatism’s dangers are less distinct and its benefits, lately at least, more elusive. The evidence regarding what does not work is vivid: the city has tilted one direction, then another and gone nowhere. Weary arguments persist and next spring will bloom anew like the flowers. Agencies will clamor for city money as revenues shrink. One side of the council will wag fingers at the other. It’s predictable and tiresome.

The council could ease this by coalescing around answers to pivotal questions. Where is Waynesboro bound and how can she get there? What will or can shape the city’s economy in the next decade? How can government aid or advance these developments?

What this city needs is some of McDonnell’s pragmatism to steer clear of that which divides toward that which works, to shift the city from neutral to drive. Waynesboro has idled long enough.