Yes, We Kaine??????
By LisaB on July 29, 2008 at 6:00 PM in Current Affairs
Today come reports about potential democratic running mates for BO. Until now, a pretty tight cordon has been maintained with only speculation to chew on about who might make a good running mate.
Well, now the flood gates have opened and the celestial choirs are tuning up.
According to today’s WaPo, Virginia Gov. Timothy Kaine, Senator Evan Bayh (Indiana) and Senator Joe Biden, Jr (Del) are being seriously vetted. “Others considered” include Senator Christopher Dodd (Conn.), Senator Hillary Clinton (NY) and former Senator Samm Nunn (Ga). Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is mentioned further down in the article for some reason.
For those not in the know, “seriously vetted” is different from “indifferently vetted” – a category likely being applied to Senator Jack Reed (R.I.) and republican Senator Chuck Hagel (Neb) this year’s sacrificial lamb for post-partisan bipartisanship.
But the lead on the story revolves around Governor Kaine, who has leaked the information (or been told to leak).
Read the rest ->
Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has told close associates that he has had “very serious” conversations with Sen. Barack Obama about joining the Democratic presidential ticket and has provided documents to the campaign as it combs through his background, according to several sources close to Kaine.
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Aides to Kaine declined to comment about the possibility that Obama might pick him, referring all questions to the senator’s campaign. “The governor has been pretty clear from the beginning, when Senator Obama asked him to be a national co-chair, that any conversation he has with the campaign, on any topic, are conversations that he is keeping private,” said Delacey Skinner, Kaine’s spokeswoman.
Any conversation private? Huh? Such as whether one is being considered for VP?
Anyway, it looks like the BO campaign is floating the idea of Kaine for the following reason:
Kaine, a former Richmond mayor, would bring outside-the-Beltway credentials to the campaign. The relationship the two share would seem to fit with Obama’s desire, as he said, for someone “with independence — who’s willing to tell me where he thinks, or she thinks, I’m wrong.” And the governor probably would bolster Obama in Virginia, where the campaign is making an all-out push.
But there are concerns:
. . .Kaine has no foreign policy background, and as a first-term governor, he may add to voters’ concerns about Obama’s experience. Kaine remains popular in Virginia, but he has had trouble dealing with Republicans and has no single defining achievement to point to on the campaign trail.
ontheissues.org has a profile of the different policy positions Governor Kaine takes, although there are significant gaps in information and the latest is about two years old. Whether that is from a lack of information or a chronic inability to articulate a position, a la Obama, is not clear.
Notably, Kaine has “a faith-based opposition to abortion” and is a member of Democrats for Life of America.
Ontheissues has this from Gov. Kaine about abortion:
Promote abstinence; ban partial-birth abortion
I will reduce abortion in Virginia by enforcing current Virginia restrictions, passing an enforceable ban on partial-birth abortion, ensuring women’s access to health care (including legal contraception), and promoting abstinence-focused education and adoption. We should reduce abortion in this manner, rather than by criminalizing women and doctors.
Source: Campaign website www.kaine2005.org, “Issues” Nov 8, 2005
Back in June, the Boston Globe had a story on Gov. Kaine, with some of it echoed in today’s WaPo.
Obama, though, clearly has warm feelings for Kaine, who befriended the Illinois senator when he came to Virginia to stump for Kaine in 2005. (They discovered that their mothers came from the same small town in Kansas.) Campaigning in Virginia last week, Obama appeared with all three of Virginia’s Democratic notables, but he reserved special affection for Kaine.
“When you’re in the political business, there are a lot of people who are your allies, there are a lot of people who you’ve got to do business with, but you don’t always have a lot of friends,” Obama said at a rally, according to the Washington Post’s Virginia Politics blog. “The governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia is my friend.”
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Kaine, 50, was raised in Kansas City, Mo., the son of an ironworker and a home economics teacher. After graduating from the University of Missouri with an economics degree, he went to Harvard Law School. After his first year, he took a year off to serve as a Jesuit missionary in Honduras, running a small vocational school for teenage boys and honing his Spanish.
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In his 2005 campaign for governor, Kaine introduced himself as a leader guided by his “family and Christian faith,” and he used that image to fend off a Republican attack on a wedge issue.
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Kaine said he hopes religious Democrats learn to talk about their faith in campaigns – not to proselytize, but to explain themselves to voters. “Democrats talk too often about, ‘Here’s what I think about this issue,’ ” he said. “They give the policies, but they don’t give the flesh and blood. Voters want to understand what motivates you.”
Well, that’s nice, Gov. Kaine. Mind telling that to Obama? We still don’t know what motivates him other than a mirror.
According to Terry McAuliffe, Virginia is a key state and Kaine would be a good choice. The Falls Church News-Press had an article on July 24th about a visit by McAuliffe.
McAuliffe was adamant in his recommendation of Kaine as the Democratic Party’s vice presidential nominee Tuesday, although he stressed to the News-Press after his speech, which included an informal half-hour question and answer period, that the ultimate choice will be Obama’s very personal one.
However, the fact that he proposed Kaine over his own candidate and long-time friend, Hillary Clinton, suggested that he knows the Clinton option is off the table.
He told the large audience in the school cafeteria that there are only two factors in picking a vice president. The first, he said, is the ability of the choice to govern effectively as president, if need be. The second is personal compatibility with the presidential candidate.
“These are the only two factors that really matter,” he said. “Others, like geographical considerations, are much less important.”
Kaine was among the first public officials to endorse Obama’s campaign a year before the launch of the primary season, and has campaigned with him often.
OK, so is Kaine the guy? Arguments for him look strong and in line with the type of person Obama might look for. But you never know. Kaine could find himself under the bus if this “float” finds problems. Although it seems like a leak – and could be – at this point, leaking a potential running mate’s name allows for more information to come out about that person than might be found through traditional vetting procedures.
Having gotten so far in the vetting process, Kaine may have found himself in the position of having to leak his own status (and look like a self-important tool) in order to allow less subtle digging and all out opposition research to take a crack at him. If anything objectionable pops up, Kaine will be someone Obama “thought he knew.”
And, having written off women over 40, I very much doubt any problems with Kaine’s pro-life views will be taken seriously. It is more likely to be considered a plus when trying to attract disaffected republicans.
Well, we’ll see. And NQ readers? Fire away.
by Ronald Scott
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