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.

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.

Mike Signer wants to use Virginia’s lieutenant governor job as one to be a people’s advocate in Richmond.