I ’ve never understood why it is considered complimentary to say that someone has no enemies when the only way to achieve that is to go through life never standing up for anything or anybody.
Yet in modern politics, that makes you golden.
Look at Barack Obama. The principal reason for his popularity is that he’s a political cipher. During the 23 months he was in the U.S. Senate before announcing his campaign for the presidency, Obama was a backbencher.
He championed no great causes, wrote no impressive legislation, proposed no original solutions to the problems of the day. Consequently, he made no enemies. He reaped the blessings of blandness.
Now we’ve learned that Obama is considering selecting as his running mate a man just like him: Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, who also enjoys the advantage of a meager record.
He was a city councilman in Richmond from 1994 to 2000; Kaine’s boasts of having served as mayor for two of those years must be put in context. Until 2004, Richmond did not have an elected at-large mayor. The City Council chose one of its own to serve as titular mayor — similar to a jury electing a foreman. Overseeing the city’s day-to-day operation was the job of the city manager.
In 2000, Kaine announced that he would not seek a fifth term on the City Council, which might have been the end of his political career had fate not intervened. State Sen. Emily Couric, considered a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor, was stricken with pancreatic cancer. She was forced to drop out of the race; Kaine saw his moment and stepped in.
Serving the next four years in a largely ceremonial role positioned him well to run for governor against Republican Jerry Kilgore, who, as Virginia’s attorney general, had been required to make principled decisions.
Kaine, too, has principles, but he ran on the pledge not to act on them if elected. A Catholic, he opposes both abortion and the death penalty but promised not to try to thwart either practice as governor. As he explained to Charlie Rose last week, “I am going to uphold the laws, even the laws I have some discomfort with.”
Hmmm. If Kaine had been in power during the civil rights battles of the 1960s, would he have followed the same logic? Would he have argued that, although he personally opposed segregation, he was obligated to uphold the democratically enacted Jim Crow laws?
As governor, Kaine has been largely inconsequential, which has earned him few ardent fans, but equally few ardent enemies.
His predecessor, Mark Warner, now running for the U.S. Senate, also was a cipher when he ran for governor in 2001. Having made an estimated $200 million fortune brokering spectrum licenses — the airwaves upon which cell phone calls are transmitted — Warner set his sights on the acquisition of power. Like Obama, he parlayed his inexperience as an engine for change.
“The old style of politics of saying anything to get elected is not what we need,” candidate Warner said. When his Republican opponent, Mark Earley, warned that Warner would raise taxes if elected, Warner said, “The fact is that I will not raise taxes. My plan states it. I’ve said it throughout this campaign. And no matter how many times my opponent may say otherwise, I will not raise your taxes.”
Once elected, Warner proudly presided over the largest tax increase in Virginia’s history.
Other than that breathtaking deceit, he accomplished virtually nothing as governor — and now he’s likely to be elected senator. Kaine, too, is an inconsequential governor, and he’s being considered for the vice presidency. With no substantial experience in national politics, Obama wants to run the free world.
If any of those scenarios play out, cynics will have to expand their maxim. Not only does no good deed go unpunished; apparently — at least in politics — the absence of deeds can be richly rewarded.
