Sunday, November 15, 2009
Kaine saw much progress in his four years
Dan Radmacher
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From the RoundTable blog
Gov. Tim Kaine would have every right to some disappointment, maybe even a little bitterness, as he prepares to leave office. His four-year term was far more difficult than anyone had reason to suspect when he won election in 2005, and it was capped by a turnover of the governor's mansion to Republicans after eight years in Democratic hands.
But in an interview last week with The Roanoke Times editorial board, Kaine seemed positively chipper. Breaking the goals for his term into three broad categories of executive, legislative and political, he enumerated the successes he saw in all three.
During his tenure, Virginia racked up a string of accolades as the best managed state, best state to do business in and, one Kaine seemed most proud of, the best place for a child to be born to experience success throughout life.
Though the economic downturn has been difficult, Virginia's top-notch management has helped it weather the storm better than most states, Kaine said, noting that the unemployment rate is 3 to 3.5 percentage points lower here than the national average.
On the legislative front, Kaine noted his success in expanding pre-K. Even though his ultimate goal of universal access to pre-K was thwarted, Kaine said the 40 percent expansion in the number of students attending pre-K would make a difference in the years to come.
Though he was not successful in getting sustainable increases in revenue for the state's roads, Kaine said that urban mass transit systems were better funded today than when he took office.
The lack of action on roads and reforming the state's partisan redistricting process were his biggest disappointments.
Despite the sting of Republican gains in the Nov. 3 election, Kaine also saw reason to be pleased with political progress during his term.
"The state's landscape has changed," he said. "My goal was to make Virginia more politically competitive."
When Kaine took office, both Virginia's senators and a majority of its representatives were Republican, and the state hadn't voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964. Now, both senators are Democrats, as are a majority of the representatives. And, of course, Virginia ended up in Barack Obama's column in last year's historic presidential election.
"You don't win or lose a race in Virginia now because of the letter after your name," Kaine said, and that's good for the state, especially at the presidential level.
Before 2008, he said, Republicans didn't have to work for Virginia, and Democrats largely didn't bother trying. That won't be the case in the future, and that will also mean more attention from the sitting president.
I asked Kaine if it was disappointing to enter office with such high hopes, then spend most of his term dealing with massive budget cuts and scaled-back expectations.
His response? "I'm glad I was governor during this time. I like doing hard things."
Kaine had an interesting take on the necessity for budget cuts. Spending money, he seemed to say, was easy. "I trust other people to spend money as well as I can," he said.
Figuring out where best to trim when revenue falls, though, is harder -- and more crucial. "I don't trust other people to cut the budget as much as I trust me and my team."
Once he leaves office, Kaine will gear up to assume full-time responsibilities in his controversial role as chairman of the Democratic National Committee. There, he'll face challenges that will make Virginia's budget problems look trifling. He'll be trying to help Democrats buck the historic trend of a new president's party losing congressional seats in the mid-term election. A still-shaky economy won't help.
Countering the conventional wisdom, he sees passage of the health care reform bill as something that could create a tailwind for Democrats. We'll see.
Where does Kaine see himself after that? He thinks he'll stay involved in public service, somehow, though he doesn't seem inclined toward another run for office.
"I kind of doubt you'll see my name on a bumper sticker again," Kaine said.
Kaine's term was not what anyone would have anticipated when he took office. The faltering economy robbed him of the ability to accomplish as much as he would have liked legislatively. But I think he'll be remembered as a governor who calmly and successfully guided Virginia through some of the roughest economic times since the Great Depression.
Radmacher is the editorial page editor of The Roanoke Times.
