According to WaPo, VA Governor Tim Kaine is high on Obama’s shortlist for Veep. I admit that I don’t know much of anything about him. He’s only been Guv for a couple of years. I read his wiki entry and although there don’t seem to be any big controversies there, I also don’t see any of the foreign policy/military cred that Obama supposedly needs to balance the ticket. On the plus side, he might help Obama win VA. It does strike me that a lot of his philosophies appear to me to mirror Obama’s. Fiscal liberal, long time civil rights attorney and fair housing advocate. Strikes me as someone who might be sympatico with Obama ideologically and philosphically, but I wonder about the lack of foreign policy gravitas.
Anyway, I think the best way to find out about a Governor is to ask the people he/she governs. So what do VA Dopers think of this dude? Could you see him as Veep? Could you see him as POTUS?
I’ve never heard of Tim Kaine, actually, although I’ve not been watching the VP choices that closely. First thing I thought, though, was exactly how confusing can news reports get with a Kaine and a McCain? You just know that quote attributions would be getting mixed up left and right.
Just think if he was McCain’s VP choice. It would be the McCain/Kaine ticket.
I have a feeling the sound of the candidates names paired together is something that gets factored into decisions. You’ll never see Al Franken running with Ben Stein, for instance.
Apropos of nothing much: I’ve heard tell that Ben Stein chipped in $5,000 for Franken’s campaign, and is alleged to have explained “He’s the smartest man I ever met”.
Northern Virginia–my home–is the richest part of the state, and we tend to pay out more in taxes than we receive in services. Under Mark Warner, Kaine’s predecessor, we got the bulk of the “Mixing Bowl ,” a big expensive highway project that alleviated a huge traffic snarl where I-95 meets the Capital Beltway. Under Kaine, we basically went back to paying more and getting less.
I voted for the guy and I don’t want to demonize him or anything–the rest of the state needs its turn at the trough–but he lacks the kind of achievement that one rewards with a VP nod.
They started working on that project while Gilmore was still your guv, which means it was probably planned all the way back under Gov. Macaca’s administration.
He’s tried hard to even things out, but he’s been unable to arm-twist enough downstate Republicans into going along.
I agree. I’m not really sure how he moved into the top 3-4 veepstake possibilities.
I think it’s a smokescreen. He doesn’t have the type of experience Obama could use. Maybe he’s someone to sic the paparazzi on while he’s vetting his real choices.
It’s obscure but one of the reasons Kaine played so well to the downstate crowd is his open and avowed faith. In his campaign for Governor he frankly and openly discussed having a deep faith and being a democrat and how those two combined well in his mind. It was a powerful message and one that could resonate with the southern religious vote. It wouldn’t give the ticket a majority of those voters but might force McCain to play defense. Without a VAST majority of that cohort McCain remains on the outside looking in.
Kaine won on the strength of the Warner governorship (Mark Warner is one of the most amazing politicians I’ve seen from any party). He did this even though he was considerably more liberal than Warner - he took great pains during the campaign to appear moderate and has tried to do so in the governor’s mansion. Virginia remains pretty conservative at heart.
He also won in 2005 because his opponent, Jerry Kilgore, waged an awful and disorganized campaign, and because Virginia Republicans have been a divided and squabbling bunch for years.
Now, the man has some considerable strengths, but he’s only in office because of the strength of Mark Warner and the weakness of his opponents. He doesn’t have much of a base of his own. Mark Warner worked for years to build a statewide base for himself and is becoming a national force. Though Kaine is governor, his base still remains metro Richmond.
Not vice-presidential material. The other governor mentioned in articles, Kathleen Sebilius, is a much stronger choice.
I agee with Mr. Moto. Kaine came in on the stength of Mark Warner and doesn’t really stand out on his own. I was really surprised when I saw his name as a possiblility. While he may make a fine VP, I’m not getting the feeling that he is a GREAT governor. If they had Warner on the ticket I would say they had made a great choice - Kaine = meh. Maybe they want him to would swing the Virginia vote?
Seems to me that, while Virginia is pretty Republican state, we tend to like a Democrat for governor and Kaine was Warner’s followup in the party.
The rest of the state has had its turn at the trough, and then stolen NoVA’s turn time and time again. The downstate politicans keep coming up with scams for NoVA to have higher regional taxes to replace the money siphoned off from NoVA’s transportation needs to pay for downstate pork.
I thought he seemed like a sort of lightweight choice for Veep and it looks like the Virginians around here think the same thing. I wonder if Arky might be onto something that he’s a decoy. It makes me wonder if Obama’s really looking at Mark Warner (and vetting Kaine merely as a close associate), but the fact that Warner is currently a Senate candidate probably makes that an unlikely choice. I don’t know why Obama would take a guy as green as Kaine, who has no military or foreign policy cred, unless it’s purely geographical. I see in Kaine’s Wiki entry that he used to be a Catholic missionary, so maybe he’s being considered as someone who might play to those blue collar whites that Obama supposedly has so much trouble with.
This year I went with Equality Virginia to lobby the state legislature for LGBT rights. At our reception for delegates and senators, Governor Kaine walked in to the cheers of everyone. His open support for us meant a lot to me. A straight-ally woman who I’d lobbied with burst into tears seeing so many Virginia politicians standing up in support of us, which would have been unimaginable in this state only a few years ago. Kaine is a hero in my book.
I’m sure all of us can find many reasons to like or dislike particular politicians. That calculus doesn’t affect vice-presidential picks, though. Heroes can be an absolute disaster on the ticket, and a chump you can’t stand can be an asset that can help you win a state or two.
How does Kaine help Obama win? I don’t think LBGT policies enter into this much - Obama himself is downplaying this issue.
My hunch is, it was planned 'way before George Allen, and props to Gilmore and Warner for doing all the heavy lifting on something that could’ve been the South’s own Big Dig . By contrast, Tim Kaine’s biggest unqualified success is the mandatory (with an opt-out provision) HPV vaccine, which–well, let’s just say he was a little too dismissive of the counterarguments (The same proposal was made in DC and is horribly unpopular there with Black parents who don’t want their daughters used as guinea pigs in a Tuskegee -like experiment with dubious merits). Again, not the sort of thing you reward with the Vice-Presidency.
First of all, you should know that summer polls do shift around.
And Virginia isn’t much of a swing state in presidential elections - it has gone Republican since 1964. We do elect Democrats regularly to the governor’s mansion and to the Senate, but those are different jobs and there is considerable evidence that Virginia voters treat these races differently, especially as our Democrats running for high office tend to be much more moderate than, say, Senator Obama.
The fact that our election for governor is held in an off year for a single term complicates matters considerably. There was no way for voters to register their approval of Warner’s administration except by voting for Kaine, who they knew little about. I can tell you that they would rather have voted to reelect Warner.
I wonder if Kaine’s pro-life stance has anything to do with his consideration. If it is, I don’t think it would work to pull any social conservatives. They’re staying with the Republicans regardless, and it wouldn’t do anything to placate Hillary voters either.