We are living in a time of great promise, and probably unrealistic expectations.

Politics is changing at an ever-faster pace, spurred by unrealistic timelines, short attention spans and vast quantities of impatience.

Patience and looking ahead more than a year or two for future needs are virtues better understood in China than in our culture. The Chinese better understand timelines.

We are a tremendously impatient people who expect instantaneous solutions to difficult problems and we are prepared to tar-and-feather leaders who don’t cater to the simplistic notion of what have you done for me today.

Another way of looking at that is that our leaders may have done a poor job of setting realistic expectations and selling achievable timelines for accomplishments.

Most people today are not hard-core Democrats or hard-core Republicans. They are more independent than that and ready to turn against either party if it fails to meet minimal political expectations.

The media, which is also in a state of great flux and economic uncertainty, must share the blame for worshiping in the church of what’s happening now and why wasn’t it fixed yesterday.

Unrealistic timelines for solutions of long-term problems are set in today’s celebrity-and-entertainment-driven media, which is earning lower marks for trustworthiness along with most other institutions.

Bankers are depicted as thieves, lawyers as ambulance chasers, medical professionals as out-of-control profit centers, journalists as biased liars and politicians as worse than the rest of those professional scoundrals.

Why are the politics of our state and our nation seen as corrupted, out of touch and less than admirable?

Being a political leader today can be seen by as many as half the people as a little dirty, and suspect. Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook” line is becoming a more commonly disbelieved defense.

When partisanship gets too intense, too pervasive, too prolonged and too nasty, the two teams that can’t play ball together earn scorn from non-affiliated independents as well as from the partisans of the other side.

It’s sort of like leveraging two-thirds of the public against your own excessive partisanship.

A lot of people view politics today as entertainment. This may feed some of the tendencies toward intense partisanship.

“In 2008, the presidential election became blockbuster entertainment,“ reads the first line in the new book Game Change by a pair of veteran journalists, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann.

The presidential level does leave politicians open to be viewed as celebrities much more so than at the levels of politics closer to the people, and closer to the community. We are much more likely to treat neighbors as neighbors and as real people as opposed to celebrities when they are in political leadership roles at the local level.

But being a political leader does increase one’s visibility as just about any level above the soil and water conservation board, which is an elected position in Virginia somewhat quieter than the school board.

Still, unfortunate stereotypes become attached to many political leaders.

Democrats are depicted as tax-and-spend, terrorist-coddling baby killers and Republicans as pollution-loving, anti-tax, climate change denying, borrow-and-spend war mongers.

No wonder they can’t get along.

In truth, leadership involves the willingness and the ability to make ethical choices among competing goods and to compromise and work together to get things done.

Virginia has a long and distinguished list of political leaders and community leaders who, by and large, have understood the ethical demands and constraints of leadership.

At times, they can even work together.

One of those times in when government is divided as it is now and economic conditions are dire, as they are today.

A government that can’t compromise is a government that can quickly fail.

Now is a good time for injecting ethics, civility, respect and trust in politics along with a belief in the value of working together across the aisle to get things done for the people of our localities, our state and our nation.

Ethical choices involve timelines. What can we do today and what must we do for tomorrow.

U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh is a centrist kind of guy in the Indiana-Virginia tradition of moderates who occasionally thrive in one party or the other.

The Indiana Democrat stunned fellow party members on Presidents’ Day with his announcement that he would not seek a third Senate term on Nov. 2 at the end of a politically volatile year in which party polls have suddenly turned upside down.

2010 is an upside-down weather year in which Virginia inherited New York’s snowscapes, an upside-down political year in which Democrats inherited the last few years’ GOP poll numbers and a generally wacky time of rapid change driven largely by fear in economic and housing markets uncertain about when up is really up and down is really down.

Bayh, 54, is a man caught in the middle.

Centrists, including Bayh and Virginia’s pair of moderate Democrats, Jim Webb and Mark Warner, have been unable to draw both parties in the tradition-bound and prima-donna-centric Senate into coalitions able to govern from the middle.

Both parties reward the kind of team-sport and ideologically driven party bashing of the other side that makes the middle of the political road, as Texans used to brag, a place for yellow-striped dead armadillos.

Even hungry Americans in states where roadkill is a legal food supply are not particularly attracted to armadillos, and even bold moderates can find the middle hazardous to political health when super-partisanship trumps the otherwise practical notion of compromise.

Bayh, a 1981 University of Virginia law school graduate, said he was sick of politics as blood sport, fed up with the lack of bipartisan spirit needed to allow compromise and not hopeful partisan gridlock in Washington is about to change.

A two-term governor before he became a two-term senator, Bayh has the credentials, if not the charisma, for making a national ticket. But that is a road he has been down several times as a potential vice presidential choice, and, a little over two long years ago, as a tester of presidential waters who found them too chilly.

Neither Indiana nor Virginia has been a prolific mother of presidents in recent years despite efforts by former governors Chuck Robb, Doug Wilder, George Allen, Jim Gilmore and Mark Warner to order up periodic pregnancy tests.

Since the late John Dalton was governor from 1978 to 1982, the only Virginia chief executives not to publicly check the status of the Old Dominion’s presidential womb were governors Gerry Baliles and Tim Kaine, and Kaine did a quite public vice presidential pregnancy test.

There may be no womb for moderates, despite the once more commonly held belief that governing from the center is the smart way to put together lasting coalitions.

For Bayh to try again for the White House, the subject of some speculation since he declared he was more an executive type of guy than a lover of legislatures, he might recast himself as an outsider to the Congress and a radical centrist.

He could try to ride a popular centrist agenda to tackle short-term job problems and long-term fiscal messes.

Nothing changes faster than change in our nation’s political life and fortunes these days.

One day a politician can be a tiger, tigress or hunk in the game of celebrity political Roller Derby played daily in different cable flavors, but the next he or she can be a washed-up hulk. Richard Nixon was the incredible hulk who bulked back up and returned to rule and then to ruin.

The inability of both political parties to face up to long-term problems is not changing, unless it’s worsening. Bayh sought entitlement reform and deficit reduction, which was undone by short-term partisan power jockeying.

A fitness fanatic who once had a union job in Washington during college summers building the Metro rail system, he knew the dangers of touching a third rail and risking political electrocution. His father was a senator, so he knew the job’s roles.

What he would have liked to have changed is the role and definition of moderate. Instead of being disrespected and run over, centrists could be operating in the public interest as respected bipartisan craftmasters of the compromise he believed is needed to solve longer-term problems.

In congressional time, there’s always plenty of time for partisan campaigning, but what Congress has not found time for in a while is bipartisan discussion and action that gets much more than lip service.

Bayh is still young and his time may still be in the future. Or, he may be the Senate’s latest member in both parties to leave office frustrated by a system that rewards and empowers the party pur-ists who pummel the other side hard and fast on everything, consequential or not.

Bob Gibson is executive director of the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership. The opinions expressed here are his own and not necessarily those of the institute.

U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh is a centrist kind of guy in the Indiana-Virginia tradition of moderates who occasionally thrive in one party or the other.

The Indiana Democrat stunned fellow party members on Presidents’ Day with his announcement that he would not seek a third Senate term on Nov. 2 at the end of a politically volatile year in which party polls have suddenly turned upside down.

2010 is an upside-down weather year in which Virginia inherited New York’s snowscapes, an upside-down political year in which Democrats inherited the last few years’ GOP poll numbers and a generally wacky time of rapid change driven largely by fear in economic and housing markets uncertain about when up is really up and down is really down.

Bayh, 54, is a man caught in the middle.

Centrists, including Bayh and Virginia’s pair of moderate Democrats, Jim Webb and Mark Warner, have been unable to draw both parties in the tradition-bound and prima-donna-centric Senate into coalitions able to govern from the middle.

Both parties reward the kind of team-sport and ideologically driven party bashing of the other side that makes the middle of the political road, as Texans used to brag, a place for yellow-striped dead armadillos.

Even hungry Americans in states where roadkill is a legal food supply are not particularly attracted to armadillos, and even bold moderates can find the middle hazardous to political health when super-partisanship trumps the otherwise practical notion of compromise.

Bayh, a 1981 University of Virginia law school graduate, said he was sick of politics as blood sport, fed up with the lack of bipartisan spirit needed to allow compromise and not hopeful partisan gridlock in Washington is about to change.

A two-term governor before he became a two-term senator, Bayh has the credentials, if not the charisma, for making a national ticket. But that is a road he has been down several times as a potential vice presidential choice, and, a little over two long years ago, as a tester of presidential waters who found them too chilly.

Neither Indiana nor Virginia has been a prolific mother of presidents in recent years despite efforts by former governors Chuck Robb, Doug Wilder, George Allen, Jim Gilmore and Mark Warner to order up periodic pregnancy tests.

Since the late John Dalton was governor from 1978 to 1982, the only Virginia chief executives not to publicly check the status of the Old Dominion’s presidential womb were governors Gerry Baliles and Tim Kaine, and Kaine did a quite public vice presidential pregnancy test.

There may be no womb for moderates, despite the once more commonly held belief that governing from the center is the smart way to put together lasting coalitions.

For Bayh to try again for the White House, the subject of some speculation since he declared he was more an executive type of guy than a lover of legislatures, he might recast himself as an outsider to the Congress and a radical centrist.

He could try to ride a popular centrist agenda to tackle short-term job problems and long-term fiscal messes.

Nothing changes faster than change in our nation’s political life and fortunes these days.

One day a politician can be a tiger, tigress or hunk in the game of celebrity political Roller Derby played daily in different cable flavors, but the next he or she can be a washed-up hulk. Richard Nixon was the incredible hulk who bulked back up and returned to rule and then to ruin.

The inability of both political parties to face up to long-term problems is not changing, unless it’s worsening. Bayh sought entitlement reform and deficit reduction, which was undone by short-term partisan power jockeying.

A fitness fanatic who once had a union job in Washington during college summers building the Metro rail system, he knew the dangers of touching a third rail and risking political electrocution. His father was a senator, so he knew the job’s roles.

What he would have liked to have changed is the role and definition of moderate. Instead of being disrespected and run over, centrists could be operating in the public interest as respected bipartisan craftmasters of the compromise he believed is needed to solve longer-term problems.

In congressional time, there’s always plenty of time for partisan campaigning, but what Congress has not found time for in a while is bipartisan discussion and action that gets much more than lip service.

Bayh is still young and his time may still be in the future. Or, he may be the Senate’s latest member in both parties to leave office frustrated by a system that rewards and empowers the party pur-ists who pummel the other side hard and fast on everything, consequential or not.

Bob Gibson is executive director of the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership. The opinions expressed here are his own and not necessarily those of the institute.

    A few decades ago, Virginia law forbade the sale of a mule after dark.

    That may have been good law a few centuries ago, before the dawn of electricity when fast talking mule salesmen might take advantage of a needy buyer on a moonless night.

    The mule-seller lobby may have been slack or lacked pull in those days of a more agrarian Old Dominion.

    Government also worked at a slower pace and was closer to the people. It kept up with mule hucksters and tricksters.

    Why the law grew musty on the books into the last decades of the 20th Century—long after the state’s dreaded mule tax was eliminated—tells a tale on state government.

    Richmond still reacts slowly to crisis and even more slowly when change has left in place a skeleton of law designed to handle problems that have moved on.

    Virginia’s tax structure, and even its unique system of entirely separate and distinct cities and counties, may have fit the needs and the state’s modernity of the 1920s.

    Its application to the needs of the 2010s leaves the state burdened with baggy skeletons of outdated tax structures that weigh Virginia down.

    The state’s adherence to fiscal conservatism is not enhanced by a bag of old law bones that never seem to die, be buried, reconnected to modern needs or reborn.

    We just carry them around, as if weightier books of law carry the magic of relevance to when they were born.

    They don’t.

      Do cities and counties need a personal property car tax or a business, professional and occupational license tax in 2010?

      Yes and no. No if they are given more modern and fair means of raising revenue, and yes if they aren’t.

      Instead, the state chooses to venerate the antiquated and celebrate only the least efficient and partial fixes, such as a Rube Goldberg contraption that funnels state taxpayer money to every local government in Virginia to pay a portion of car owners’ local tax bills. We Virginians double-dip pay part of our car tax out of one pocket as local taxpayers and part out of another as state taxpayers. It must hurt less that way.

      Who said inefficiency lacks rewards? No one had to raise a tax to create a system in which every taxpayer paid himself tax relief and the ability to pay car taxes out of two pockets instead of just one.

      Is the gross receipts business, professional and occupational license tax, or BPOL, tax fair? No.

      How fair is it to tax gross receipts even if there is no profit? What kind of business incentive is that when creation of jobs is a major goal?

      Is it antiquated? Yes.

      People waiting in traffic on Virginia’s highways can rest assured that governors come and governors go but some laws, like old taxes, will hang around until people forget why they were passed.

      At least it is now legal to buy a mule at midnight.

    The year that ends in just 13 days has brought newspapers to their knees with many praying for new business models that can sustain and revive American journalism.

    A crashing business model once based upon booming retail and classified ads and monopolistic rates of revenue isn’t coming back. Ad revenue and readership dipped and dived at papers whose profitability plummeted and whose size, staff and stories shrank.

    Newsrooms at major papers in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Richmond, Cleveland, San Francisco, Sacramento and Los Angeles are pale shadows of their former selves. Coverage of state and local governments throughout the country is diminished or disappearing.

    Yet, some of journalism’s leading lights are voicing optimism that the days of newsrooms producing the quality of journalism vital to the functioning of democracy and to informed electorates are far from over.

    Journalism is changing more than it is dying. Dominant newspapers and their broadcasting cousins, major television network news operations, are losing ground to upstarts and far more diverse collections of news gatherers as people design their own sets of free media.

    Collections of non-profits, public radio operations and collaborations among traditional news gatherers and newer journalistic enterprises are creatively stepping up to supplement or replace the dying monopolistic media.

    Len Downie, former executive editor of the Washington Post, and Michael Schudson, a professor of communication at Columbia University, have produced an upbeat report on how newer media can continue the traditions of what they call “accountability journalism” in this new age of .advocacy journalism. 

    Their report, The Reconstruction of American Journalism, discusses new collaborations starting up in the public interest around the country and recommends six steps to support diverse sources of independent news reporting.
The report is available online through the Journalism School at Columbia University:  http://www.columbiajournalismreport.org.

    In it, the authors discuss how larger newspapers battered by the recession are changing. Micropayments to read individual news stories through the Internet using a model of online digital music purchases and business-to-business arrangements to share in ad revenue from other sites that republish stories are two of the various proposals from Internet entrepreneurs playing around the margins of what readers now regard as free media on the web.

    They conclude that new digital technology combined with innovations and new reporting models can energize and expand possibilities for good reporting. Online journalists, non-profit entities and new collaborations among groups of newsrooms, such as the eight largest newspapers in Ohio pooling and sharing stories, are giving consumers of news fresh reporting and the ability to participate in journalism through multimedia sites, blogs, social networks, podcasts and videos.

    Newsrooms and non-profits alike are finding new partners in a media dance that speeds up the pace of news while allowing for reporting on multiple platforms.
    In Charlottesville, The Daily Progress is four months into a partnership with Charlottesville Tomorrow, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that covers land-use, growth and transportation issues in the city and Albemarle County with a full-time staff of two journalists and some University of Virginia interns. The newspaper and the non-profit both appear to benefit from sharing news on important issues. Stories and podcasts are distributed through the CvilleTomorrow.org Web site as well as through e-mail and social media such as Facebook, Twitter and a new Wiki known as Cvillepedia.org.

    Critics of the nonprofit could consider it more advocacy journalism than accountability journalism.

    Downie and Schudson propose half a dozen ways to further support independent news reporting. They include:

1. The Internal Revenue Service or Congress should explicitly authorize any independent news organization substantially devoted to reporting on public affairs to be created as or converted into a nonprofit entity or a low-profit Limited Liability Corporation serving the public interest, regardless of its mix of financial support, including commercial sponsorship and advertising. The IRS or Congress also should explicitly authorize program-related investments by philanthropic foundations in these hybrid news organizations—and in designated public service news reporting by for-profit news organizations.

2. Philanthropists, foundations, and community foundations should substantially increase their support for news organizations that have demonstrated a substantial commitment to public affairs and accountability reporting.

3. Public radio and television should be substantially reoriented to provide significant local news reporting in every community served by public stations and their Web sites. This requires urgent action by and reform of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, increased congressional funding and support for public media news reporting, and changes in mission and leadership for many public stations across the country.

4. Universities, both public and private, should become ongoing sources of local, state, specialized subject, and accountability news reporting as part of their educational missions. They should operate their own news organizations, host platforms for other nonprofit news and investigative reporting organizations, provide faculty positions for active individual journalists, and be laboratories for digital innovation in the gathering and sharing of news and information.

5. A national Fund for Local News should be created with money the Federal Communications Commission now collects from or could impose on telecom users, television and radio broadcast licensees, or Internet service providers and which would be administered in open competition through state Local News Fund Councils.

6. More should be done—by journalists, nonprofit organizations and governments—to increase the accessibility and usefulness of public information collected by federal, state, and local governments, to facilitate the gathering and dissemination of public information by citizens, and to expand public recognition of the many sources of relevant reporting.

    Some of the above may involve more government assistance than is likely, but the emphasis on mixing and matching new forms of collaboration demonstrates ways to enter the new year with a little more optimism about enhancing support for accountability journalism. Many Americans would object to further government subsidies of, or tax breaks for, any kind of media.

    Advocacy journalism is alive and flourishing, but the old-fashioned newsroom’s brand of holding individuals and governments accountable through honest, even-handed and diligent reporting of the news is an established value worth holding onto in a new media age. Let’s hope some can make a profit doing it right and others can do it with citizens and non-profits leading the way to new models of informing people about their politics.

    As Downie and Schudson sum up their goals, the report states, “Rather than depending primarily on newspapers and their waning reporting resources, each sizeable American community should have a range of diverse sources of news reporting. They should include a variety and mix of commercial and nonprofit news organizations that can both compete and collaborate with one another. They should be adapting traditional journalistic forms to the multimedia, interactive, real-time capabilities of digital communication, sharing the reporting and distribution of news with citizens, bloggers, and aggregators.“

      I hope and feel their optimism is justified. There is still a significant demand for news that voters, the owners of their government, can use.

(Published Nov. 25, 2009, by Old Dominion Watchdog, see: http://virginia.watchdog.org/2009/11/25/... )

Resignations like the one given by Del. Phil Hamilton last week are rare.

The Newport News Republican is one of only three Virginia legislators over the last three decades to leave the General Assembly due to ethical breaches, according to E.M. Miller, director of the division of legislative services.

Facing investigations by a House Ethics Advisory Panel and a federal grand jury, Hamilton yielded his seat in the face of charges that he negotiated for himself a $40,000 salary from an Old Dominion University teaching institute for which he had state money appropriated.

But when Hamilton resigned on Nov. 15, the House panel was required by state law to drop the investigation. A spokesperson at the U.S. Attorneys office in Alexandria said officials won’t comment on the ongoing federal investigation.

Now state lawmakers, including Governor Tim Kaine and Speaker of the House Bill Howell, say they want to change the law to allow such investigations to continue even after legislators relinquish their seats.

But it’s unlikely that lawmakers will actually toughen up ethics laws, said Bob Gibson, executive director of the Sorenson Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia and former Charlottesville Daily Progress reporter.

‘'I don’t know if there’s a will to do that in Richmond right now,‘’ Gibson said. ‘'I don’t know if there’s any political will to make it stronger.‘’

Whether any changes are made, Virginia has a comparatively good record of ethical behavior by legislators, Gibson said. Especially compared to states like Illinois and New Jersey, the state has a long history of judging legislators on the basis of their integrity.

And Virginia’s ethical laws are no weaker than those governing Congress, Gibson said.

Still, he says there’s a lot of well-deserved skepticism regarding the effectiveness of ethics boards.

‘'A lot of ethics complaints go to this type of commission and sort of disappear into a black hole and aren’t heard about much ever again,‘’ Gibson said. ‘'It’s not like this is an open discussion of ethical problems. It’s largely a quiet, out-of-the-way discussion that may or may not end up in a resolution.‘’

Virginia is one of only 10 states that do not have ethics commissions, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Complaints against delegates and senators are instead handled by E.M. Miller, who passes them along to Judge Willian Sweeny, the panel chairman.

If the two decide the complaint is worth investigating, they convene a meeting of the five-member panel—which includes two former state legislators and two citizens. But considering that members live in Lynchburg, Richmond and Northern Virginia, that’s difficult to do, Miller says.

‘'It’s a fairly unique situation when an ethics complaint is filed’‘ Miller said. ‘'This group very seldom gets together. It causes a tremendous amount of work on my part that I don’t plan for.”

And when the panel does meet, the scope of their investigations is limited. They may only deal with certain conflicts of interest where financial stakes are involved, and investigations may only be prompted by formal complaints. So if a member reads a news story or recieves a tip about an ethical breach, they are not allowed to investigate it if a complaint is not first filed.

In addition, Virginia code gives the attorney general the power to decide what information about the investigation, if any, is made public—meaing that the public never hears about most investigations. When asked how many ethics complaints were filed and investigated this year, Miller declined to answer.

Regardless of how many ethics breaches have gone unchecked, Virginia is still known for an upright political culture, said Isaac Wood, assistant communications director for the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

Wood attributes some of that tradition to the Byrd Organization, which dominated Virginia politics for the middle portion of the 20th century. Led by former Governor and U.S. Senator Harry F. Bryd, Sr., the organization had heavy influence in rural areas.

‘'There hasn’t been a need or really a demand from voters for a particularly robust system of ethical inquiry because the needs haven’t existed, at least in the public mind,” Wood said. “So it will be interesting to see whether the Hamilton case will create pressure.‘’

http://virginia.watchdog.org/2009/11/25/...

Now is the time for an injection of a little civility into the body politic.

Many politicians have succumbed to a political swine flu of sorts.

They behave a bit like pigs as they slop through campaigns and sessions of Congress trying to slime opponents with objectionable labels and ill motives.

Americans are free people, a Fluvanna County friend said recently, so that “Babbling idiots have the right to tarnish their public character just as poorly run businesses in a free market should have the right to fail. In this way, hopefully incivility takes care of itself.“

The friend, Stephen Scott, added, “I don’t think we should attempt to codify civility too much lest it become a form of control on free speech.“

As a First Amendment guy, I concur. Let the crude, rude and socially ugly characters lose their own arguments as the public reacts to punish outrageous attacks.

But, public opprobrium for shameful behavior is in short supply. Public disgrace or ill fame does not always follow from grossly wrong or vicious political conduct .

And, the media enjoy the outrageous attacks more than finding the truth or the reproach that can’t quite catch up to shameless political attackers who unfairly question others’ motives.

Incivility makes the news.

Actually, I have been insultingly unfair to pigs in this column.

As friend Andrea Young of McLean observes, “Even my animals show civility toward one another,“ observed Young a river-watcher, beekeeper and owner of a pack of large dogs. “When they don’t, one or the other will ‘alpha up’ and make sure the pack gets back to basic order.“

Young equates civility with respect. “It is that deep, abiding respect that allows me to have a discussion with those I disagree with, weigh the input, question my own motives and observations, and form an opinion grounded in reflection and thoughtfulness.“

“Civility is the lifelong personal challenge to open one’s mind to new ideas, listen with respect,“ she said.

What is civility? It involves respect for others, community service, tact, fairness and decency.

“Civility is complex,“ said P.M. Forni, who teaches Italian literature and civility at Johns Hopkins University. “Civility belongs in the realm of ethics. ... [I]t is not just an attitude of thoughtful relating to other individuals; it also entails an active interest in the well-being of our communities and even a concern for the health of the planet on which we live.“

George Washington cared deeply about civility in public life and his thoughts on the subject are earning a bit of a revival.

A sad irony surrounds the public’s layers of distrust and disgust with much of the political life centered in the nation’s capital bearing his name.

Fixing the nation’s giant civility deficit could take years. Many years of a civility surplus are not yet contemplated, budgeted or even imagined.

The Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership is considering the idea of bringing a national conference on civility in political life to Charlottesville.

Sorensen hopes to play at least a small part in a national revival of understanding and embracing the value of political civility.

Sorensen teaches ethics and civility in four programs each year that educate and train political leaders in communities across Virginia.

Eighteen Sorensen alumni will be sworn in as General Assembly members on Jan. 13, 10 of them Democrats and eight Republicans. They know the positive effects that flow and multiply from civility in public life. I know they try to practice what they preach even when the public half expects politicians to be pigs. Disclaimer: No actual pigs were harmed in the production of this column.

    Politicians really aren’t as bad as their opponents’ TV ads make them out to be, but you couldn’t prove it by their own ads.

    In a race for the political advertising gutter, both sides are apt to cut corners, shade truths, take facts well out of context and place sinister implications on their opponents’ words while slowing images enough to scare voters into believing the targets of such 30-second stink bombs are, or should be, doing perp walks.

    Any campaign spending more than $1 million these days appears more adept at throwing pungent slop at an opponent than making a strong enough case for the candidate spending the dough that he doesn’t have to throw the bitchin’ stink.

    Republicans point to Democrat Creigh Deeds and say the candidate for governor brags about being a big spender, not bothering to mention that Deeds’ budget amendments sought funding to bring Virginia teacher salaries up to the national average. That’s a goal Republican Bob McDonnell also endorsed.

    Democrats imply that McDonnell would try to strip married couples of the right to contraception when the closest he ever came to voting for such an unlikely ban was favoring a measure aimed at keeping birth-control pills out of the hands of James Madison University students at their student health dispensary.

    Voters are looking for big ideas and honest dialogue. Instead they are given Democratic ads trying to scare voters about the socially conservative McDonnell and Republican ads trying to paint Deeds as a tax-and-spend liberal.

    Scare tactics in the ads may turn a few voters the other way but also are likely, if not fully intended, to keep many voters away from the polls.

    It’s as if both sides collectively are saying, “No big ideas, no trust, just stay home.“

    If moderate or inattentive Virginians succumb to the scary ads, a smaller electorate of the Republican base and the Democratic base could end up deciding the Nov. 3 elections.

    The men running are more decent than their ad campaigns indicate. Neither one is about to bankrupt Virginia or ban us back to the Stone Age.

    One of them is going to win and then will have to work with the other party to get much done. Working across the aisle can be easier if you haven’t just spent millions of dollars trashing the other side.

    Neither man will singlehandedly raise tax rates or reduce contraceptive or reproductive rights without the majority support of both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly. 

    No Virginian is going to benefit from better schools or roads or transit unless the two sides can work together toward solutions that generally involve consensus and compromise.

    In the absence of big ideas in a governor’s race—and there are not too many floating out there this election—other factors decide elections.

    One factor at play this year is the national political dialogue and the agenda of President Obama.

    The major media and the Republicans, each for their own reasons, have decided to make the Deeds-McDonnell race into something it might not be: the measuring stick of Obama’s success or failure.

    That’s a little like sending the unpopular owner of the Baltimore Orioles a note saying it’s time for the unpopular owner of the Washington Redskins to go.

    Wrong bark. Wrong tree, perhaps. But many Republicans in Virginia want to continue the decades-long trend of this state choosing a governor from the opposite party than the winner of the White House the previous year. The GOP base is simply more enthusiastic this year. 

    Republicans have reasons for wanting to nationalize the Virginia race. A rejection of Deeds allows them to take the mansion in Richmond for the first time since Jim Gilmore lived there and claim it is an assault on every Democrat running for Congress in 2010.

    Media movers and shakers think a race that measures Obama’s first 10 months in office is a bigger story than a race that is decided by Virginians on Virginia issues, so they pretend to cover it as such.

    Democrats, meanwhile, campaign without big new ideas and seem locked into running on past successes and past fears.

    “Vote for a D like Creigh because you liked what we Ds did five years ago” and because he never wrote a controversial thesis 20 years ago that scares people who fear social conservatives, they would argue.

    Waving the bloody thesis carries a fear factor, a yuck factor and diminishing returns. If Deeds loses, his decision to run hard against the McDonnell thesis will no doubt be fat fodder for new theses, if not a dissing dissertation.

    There are positive ideas in each campaign. Just don’t look to see too many of them on TV, where the real money of campaigns continues to distort and attack and twist out of context until both candidates resemble creatures from the dark lagoon.

    They aren’t really. They just campaign that way.

    And they probably will until their highly paid consultants tell them that no longer works.

    I am afraid the bottom of the lagoon is not yet in sight.

There is little like a redistricting opportunity to focus the minds of a political party on a set of 100 Virginia House of Delegates elections.

Republicans say they have never run as many candidates for the House of Delegates as they are fielding this year.

Democrats, who have 72 House candidates—a full 13 fewer than the 85 Republicans running across Virginia, say they still expect to gain seats in the Nov. 3 elections. Republicans aren’t so sure.

Whichever party controls the House in 2010 and 2011 has a major say in the redrawing of all 100 House districts following the 2010 Census, so the numbers of uncontested seats in the 2009 House elections are way, way down.

Both parties have recruited more challengers than in recent election cycles. Plus, a number of surprise open seats have also popped into the mix, giving Virginians this fall probably the most expensive set of House elections in the state’s history.

In 2005, only 49 of the 100 House seats featured elections with at least two candidates.

In 2007, only 41 of the 100 House elections were contested.

This year, candidates for contested House seats are off and running in 70 districts and in every region of the state.

The power of redistricting is so strong that even with better party recruiting efforts—and the healthy increase in contested seats—this year’s set of elections still leaves 30 delegates in such uncompetitive districts that no challenger decided to try to unseat them. 

At least places in Southwest Virginia and from Danville to Dumfries and Delaplane to Dayton have two-party competition where there were fewer contests two and four years ago.

Republicans, who control the House and appear unlikely to lose their majority, have been the most active recruiters.

The GOP has done a better job of fund-raising. Republican candidates entered July with a total of $4.46 million in cash on hand compared with $2.88 million for Democrats.

Campaign finance reports show that 85 Republicans, 72 Democrats and 24 independents or members of smaller parties are seeking House seats on Nov. 3, increases that Virginians of all political stripes should applaud if they believe that political competition is a good thing.

Open seats due to retirements have made races more interesting in Staunton, Arlington, Halifax, Fairfax and Prince William. An open-seat race that could be ripe for a party turnover is in the Prince William district of retiring Del. Jeffrey M. Frederick, R-Woodbridge.

Yet Democrats counting on a pickup there are hard pressed to find the net gain of five other seats they would need to take a House majority. For one thing, Democrats fielded only 20 challengers to sitting House Republicans while the GOP fielded 24 candidates challenging incumbent Democrats.

Strategists in both parties call a six-seat gain by Democrats and a resulting shift of party control of the House possible but unlikely.

Republicans contend that they are likely to pick up a few seats in Virginia Beach and Northern Virginia. A gain of even two seats by the GOP would leave Democrats farther behind in a quest for majority statu.

A number of potentially tight races have involved expensive campaigns in Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties in Northern Virginia plus the Hampton Roads, Danville and Charlottesville areas.

The 58th District race between Del. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle County, and his Democratic challenger Cynthia Neff around Charlottesville has become one of the state’s most expensive contests.

Bell, who has been airing political ads on television since early August, had raised more than $672,000 entering September while Neff had raised $148,689 and had about $84,000 in cash on hand. Bell led the state’s House candidates in cash on hand with more than $570,000 in the bank entering September.

Some other contests also are likely to come close to, or exceed, the million dollar milestone.

They include Republican Barbara J. Comstock’s challenge to Del. Margaret Vanderhye, D-McLean; Democrat Robin Abbott’s challenge to Del. Phillip A. Hamilton, R-Newport News; and Democrat Gregory A. Werkheiser’s bid to unseat Del. David B. Albo, R-Springfield.

Not all the 70 contested elections are likely to be close. A number of challengers are lightly funded and face entrenched incumbents.

Thirty House incumbents have free rides. Twenty 20 Republicans, nine Democrats and one independent drew no challenger on the Nov. 3 ballots.

Unopposed incumbents are not a rare breed in Richmond. Many incumbents have the advantage of better name recognition and often have a district that the once-a-decade reapportionment process has left heavily weighted with voters who support their political party.

The U.S. Supreme Court has opened the door in a Texas case to allowing states the option of redrawing legislative districts more often than once every 10 years, as Texas was allowed to do.

In effect, states are no longer required to wait 10 years to redistrict. Virginia, where Republicans hold power in the House of Delegates, and where Democrats hold most seats in the state Senate, could conceivably join Texas in the highly partisan political game of redistricting when one party gains a clean sweep of the House, the Senate and the governor.

In other words, if redistricting stays highly partisan in the Old Dominion, there is a chance that the next party to take control might not choose to wait 10 years until the Census numbers roll in again to take advantage of their next trifecta majority to redraw the lines of House and Senate districts.

They could do what Texas Republicans did under President George W. Bush and redraw congressional district lines while they are enjoying the status of legislators empowered to choose their own voters.

Nothing is certain, or permanent, about Virginia’s politics.

    Virginia is entering the second decade of the 21st Century richer in history but poorer in its residents’ knowledge of how government works.

    The state’s demographic makeup and its politics are changing faster than in previous decades, yet its burgeoning population, which hails increasingly from all across the nation and around the world, demonstrates flagging awareness of the functioning parts and roles of government, a crucial force and major employer whose actions touch everyone.
    The Old Dominion, long ago nicknamed the Mother of Presidents, has lost some of its distinctive political identity as its civic and political life more and more resembles the nation’s. Its hugely diverse politics and an educational system that has de-emphasized history and government are parts of national trends that tend to leave young people less than fully prepared to participate in a democracy that thrives best on citizen involvement.
Virginia and the nation could benefit from a better-informed citizenry with more of a grasp of the process of democracy.

    Put another way, Americans and Virginians are increasingly at risk of losing the civic virtues that undergird the rights and welfare of all if tolerance, understanding, social responsibility, respect for others and the American belief in a capacity to make a difference are allowed to wither.

    Calls for increasing civic education to help citizens make a difference accompany warnings that, in short, the nation is at risk of losing vital public participation.

    Add in the turmoil of a news media establishment losing jobs, readership and viewership while cutting news coverage—and searching for a working business model—and a toxic recipe exists for citizens who know little about government and politics. A growing segment of the population is likely to be even less informed about public policy issues, actions and choices.

    Reversing the loss of an informed and involved electorate should be a top national and state priority if rights and freedoms born in Virginia more than two centuries ago are to be preserved as the necessary safeguards of our form of government.
Understand It or Risk Losing It

    Retiring U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter in May delivered a stirring call for better education of the American public about how government works.

    The 19-year veteran of the court observed that surveys show large majorities of Americans cannot name the basic three branches of government: the executive, legislative and judicial branches.
    Souter, in a speech at Georgetown University Law Center, warned that lack of knowledge about how government works threatens judicial independence and threatens the republic itself.

    He reminded his audience that Benjamin Franklin, when asked after the Constitutional Convention of 1787 what type of government the new nation would have, replied: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Souter sounded a note of pessimism based on the lack of civic knowledge.

    “It can be lost, as he knew,” he said of Franklin. “And the lesson we have been learning over the past couple of years is that it is being lost. It is lost when it is not understood. If it is not understood, it will basically leech away.”
Souter said concern about attacks on judicial independence led to his understanding that “the real problem was the debasement, and in some places the disappearance, of knowledge of the structure and work of the government.”
The concepts of separation of powers and of a fair and independent judiciary must be widely understood for the American republic to survive, the 69-year-old jurist warned.

    In his home state of New Hampshire, where he has retired, he has just joined an independent curriculum committee to upgrade the teaching of civics from kindergarten through 12th grade.
Souter’s talk won a prolonged standing ovation from several hundred lawyers and judges from around the country, according to Tony Mauro of Legal Times.

    His words reverberate strongly across Virginia, where civics education has taken a back seat and where occasional calls for strengthening it have been heard in the General Assembly.

    So little government is taught between the 8th and 11th grades that many Virginians today cannot name three branches of government at the state or federal level, much less understand the separation of powers.

    Ken Stroupe and Larry Sabato, who are with the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, found in a survey of 9th to 12th grade students in 20 states several years ago that:

    •  A third of students incorrectly thought that the Democratic Party is considered more conservative than the Republican Party.
    • About 30 percent could not name the U.S. vice president at the time (Dick Cheney).

    • More than 70 percent did not know the procedure by which a candidate is nominated to become president.

    • Only 29 percent were able to name even one of their state’s two U.S. senators.

    • Only 23 percent knew that most bills introduced in Congress are rejected in committee and never reach the full House or Senate.

    • More than half could not identify which branches of government are most susceptible to being influenced by lobbying and more than half said that they did not know the purpose of a political action committee.

    Bringing this disturbing story closer to home, a majority of the more than 3,000 students surveyed were from Virginia schools. In their study the authors found that “the extent to which young people fail to engage in civic life is a direct reflection of the values and priorities of the society of which they are a part. The apathy of today’s generation toward politics is a symptom of society’s neglect of civic education.”

    Involving more students in hands-on exercises—from volunteer experiences in their communities to civic game-playing in school and debates of issues—can be paths to teach civics through practice. Teaching the Bill of Rights by asking students to debate them could create a more universal understanding of why those rights were adopted, why they are still needed and why they are relevant to solving problems in our ever-more-diverse society.

    Some educators believe that lively discussions and mock elections and debates trump the mere knowledge gained from classroom lectures.

    David Weber, a veteran of more than 35 years of teaching at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, suggests that demonstrating examples of how rights are relevant in today’s society can bring alive the Bill of Rights and teach civics as a living exercise.

    Weber promotes the classroom use of case studies with selected primary sources. In his view, students “…need to understand the history of the collisions between the founding ideals and the times when the actualities have been pretty ugly.”

The Changing Face of Virginia

    Virginia is in a period of political change as its population becomes more diverse, more foreign-born and full of new and expanding cultural identities. The state’s evolving demographics alone help justify increasing and improving civics offerings in schools as well as in after-school or other community settings. An increasingly mobile and growing population means there are more people to familiarize with the basics of how government works.

    Half of Virginia’s residents were born outside the state, including a full 10 percent of the population born in another nation.5 No matter where they were born or where they went to school, Virginians have a better chance of improving life in the commonwealth the better they understand the civic life of their state and nation.

    The top five countries of birth for foreign-born Virginians are Mexico, El Salvador, India, Korea, and Guatemala.6 Breaking this down further, some 40 percent of the Virginians born abroad came from Asia, 36 percent from Latin America, 13 percent from Europe and 9 percent from Africa.
    The voters of Virginia’s present and future increasingly bring political traditions and predispositions with them from other states and nations. Some of the highest state-to-state immigration contributors include Maryland, New York, North Carolina, California, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

    Whether Virginians were born in Korea, India, New York or Richmond, they should know, for example, how Virginia’s George Mason contributed to the Bill of Rights. His work helped shape the constitutional guarantees they enjoy today. As another example, Thomas Jefferson promoted the religious freedoms they have. These are rights that everyone in the state and the nation enjoys in daily life.
See p. 1. http://www.coopercenter.org/demographics/sitefiles/documents/ pdfs/numberscount/migration.pdf

See p. 16. http://www. coopercenter.org/demographics/sitefiles/documents/pdfs/presentations/var.pdf
The Role of Civic Education in a Democracy

    Our system of representative democracy depends upon reasoned debate, negotiation and compromise. Success depends on the involvement of individuals who choose to participate in a political process that can bring about changes if enough people have the faith and understanding to make it work.

    There is no better place for citizens to become involved than in state and local governments because they affect citizens most directly. In turn, people can affect those levels of government more directly. With this as a starting base, they can better understand the national government and ways to participate in that.

    Civil and bipartisan policy discussions work best when good faith, respect for others and understanding of how the process should work are shared as broadly among citizens as possible.
Virginia and the nation have enough problems to solve without the misunderstanding and paralysis that can result when people lack the faith or knowledge to make government work.

    Recognizing this, in its recent session the General Assembly prolonged the life and mission of a commission on civics education that had been created in 2005.

The Virginia Commission on Civics Education

    The commission has already helped rewrite state Standards of Learning (SOLs) in social studies for kindergarten through 12th grade to emphasize understanding and participation in state and local government and has provided Virginia specific chapters to be used in middle school civics courses and a required 12th grade government course.
    The commission’s charge from the General Assembly is broad and challenging as the legislature instructed it this year to:

    • Develop and coordinate outreach programs in collaboration with schools to educate students on the importance of understanding that (i) representative democracy is a process dependent on reasoned debate, good faith negotiation, and compromise; (ii) individual involvement is a critical factor in community success; and (iii) consideration of and respect for others must be shown when deliberating, negotiating and advocating positions on public concerns.
    • Identify civics education projects in the commonwealth and provide technical assistance as may be needed to such programs.

    • Build a network of civics education professionals to share information and strengthen partnerships.

    • Develop, in consultation with entities having representatives on the commission and others as determined by the commission, a clearinghouse that shall be available on the Department of Education’s website. The electronic clearinghouse shall include, among other things, (i) a database of civics education resources, lesson plans and other programs of best practices in civics education; (ii) a bulletin board to promote discussion on and exchange of ideas relative to civics education; (iii) an events calendar; and (iv) links to civics education research.

    • Make recommendations to the Board of Education regarding revisions to the Standards of Learning for civics and government.

    • Submit to the governor and the General Assembly an annual report. The chairman shall submit to the governor and the General Assembly an annual executive summary of the interim activity and work of the commission no later than the first day of each regular session of the General Assembly. The executive summary shall be submitted for publication as a report document as provided in the procedures of the Division of Legislative Automated Systems for the processing of legislative documents and reports and shall be posted on the General Assembly’s website.

    Now in its fifth year, the Virginia Commission on Civics Education this year became a legislative commission and is newly charged with helping strengthen the teaching of civics in schools and communities across Virginia. Civics education in and outside of schools is adding a new focus on citizen involvement in state and local government, according to a discussion at a recent meeting of the commission in August 2009.
    The commission will sponsor a civics education summit for teachers September 24 in Richmond at the Capitol to provide additional resources to help teach active engagement in civics, including new media tools to assist teaching and new websites to aid teachers.

    The 18-member body appointed mostly by the state legislature has decided to take an inventory on what Virginia students are learning in civics and history taught in schools across the state. Members were told that in grades 9, 10 and 11 there is a “civics strand” taught in some history courses that incorporates civics lessons and exercises even in the grades where civic education and government are not separate and distinct course offerings or requirements.

Conclusion

    The state’s politics have undergone significant change in the first decade of the 21st Century as the Old Dominion evolved from a Republican-leaning state to a swing state marked by highly competitive and increasingly expensive statewide elections.

    Now that Virginia is once again in the center of the national political spotlight, let us bring back the spirit of Mason, Jefferson and Madison to inform and guide new generations of residents in the balancing act that is a government of, by and for the people.

    As a newly appointed member of the Virginia Commission on Civics Education, who is well acquainted with its members, I find them to be serious about a desire to give civic education a more useful role in the lives of Virginians. This, in turn, can improve the lives of people through participation in the decisions that state, local and federal governments make.

    The commission cannot be effective in a vacuum or without the assistance of many in Virginia who value the rights and responsibilities of citizens and wish for a restoration of civil responsibilities and fuller exercise of civic rights.

    I would urge anyone with useful ideas and examples to further this mission to please submit them to me or to the commission.

http://www.coopercenter.org/publications/vanewsletter/.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Bob Gibson is executive director of the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership, a non-partisan organization based at the University of Virginia and dedicated to improving political leadership and strengthening the quality of government at all levels. Before joining the institute in 2008, he was for many years a staff writer and editor with the Charlottesville Daily Progress, where he won many awards for his coverage of politics and government. He is a 1972 graduate of the University of Virginia with a B.A. in government and foreign affairs.

Virginians who live side-by-side or across town in communities across the state often do not hear the same words in the same ways.

The words “health care reform” carry vastly different meanings and connotations to the different ears that might hear them.

The power of language usually outweighs the sword, the spear, the cudgel and the bomb.

An author and former delegate from Patrick County gave a startling example the other day of how some language does not even translate from one cultural community to the next.

Barnie Day was talking about generational and cultural differences in language when he surprised a Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership class of 39 individuals by guaranteeing “there is a word that every African-American in this room knows—a word that not a single other individual here has ever heard.“

“You wouldn’t think that possible in this day and time, but it is. You’re going to see an astonishing black and white divide on this question,“ Day told the group. (He told me I could use his example.)

Day was 100 percent correct on both black and white. He asked for an honest show of hands for who knew the word “sadiddy” and only black hands shot skyward.

African-American class members explained to astonished white classmates that sadiddy means a person who acts completely superior toward another or has a perception that they are educationally or a class above another.

Day said he’d heard two black delegates describe a colleague by using the adjective, which he had never heard before.

“Language matters,“ he told the class. “Sometimes its precise meaning is critical.“

In any event, if there is one word that black Virginians use that white Virginians remain unaware of, there must be others that provide an invisible divide in understanding language.

Language is often used in politics to divide people as certain words and phrases carry special meanings for some groups and not others.

Politicians must use language their audience understands. They often choose to use language their intended audience understands especially well, even if others do not.

Consider the abortion debates in which one side emphasizes “life” and the other side stresses “choice.“ There, the code words can appear to be clearly understood by many.

Day calls the appropriation of language to carry messages intended for specific audiences and not for others “dog whistle messaging.“

“Everybody hears the words, but only the intended audience hears the message,“ he said.

A couple of examples could be “illegal immigrants” and “death panels,“ which carry powerful messages beyond the mere words.

Plenty of citizens on all sides of health care have legitimate concerns that need to be heard, but the mixing of emotional messages about illegal immigrants in with health care reform can make the chances of building consensus or compromise about as slight as getting media commentators Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olbermann to endorse the same health care plan. Media coverage may not be helping people find reasonable policy.

Consensus, compromise, bipartisanship and civility all become casualties in media wars of dueling messages in which the exciting news of clashes outweighs the sorting out and agreement on reasonable courses of policy.

In truth, Virginians and Americans have plenty enough in common to craft agreements if leaders take the harder course of using the language and the messaging that can unite enough people behind compromises. There is agreement health care can be improved in some ways.

The easier course, of course, is division and defeat of even attainable agreements through the use of language that inflames more than informs.

Great pyrrhic victories, Mexican standoffs and poison pills are built on the tongues of talented tar-and-feather talkers.

      Retiring U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter in May delivered a stirring call for better education of the American public about how government works.

      The 19-year veteran of the court observed that surveys show large majorities of Americans cannot name the basic three branches of government: the executive, legislative and judicial branches.

      Souter, in a speech at Georgetown University Law Center, warned that lack of knowledge about how government works threatens judicial independence and threatens the republic itself.

      He reminded his audience that Benjamin Franklin, when asked after the Constitutional Convention of 1787 what type of government the new nation would have, replied: “A republic, if you can keep it.“

      Souter sounded a note of pessimism based on the lack of civic knowledge.

      “It can be lost, as he knew,“ he said of Franklin. “And the lesson we have been learning over the past couple of years is is that it is being lost. It is lost when it is not understood. If it is not understood, it will basically leech away.“

      Souter said concern about attacks on judicial independence led to his understanding that “the real problem was the debasement, and in some places the disappearance, of knowledge of the structure and work of the government.“

      The republic, he said, “can be lost, it is being lost, it is lost, if it is not understood.“

      The concepts of separation of powers and of a fair and independent judiciary must be widely understood for the American republic to survive, the 69-year-old jurist warned. 

      In his home state of New Hampshire, to which he retired this month, he has just joined an independent curriculum committee to upgrade the teaching of civics from kindergarten through 12th grade.

      Souter’s talk won a prolonged standing ovation from several hundred lawyers and judges from around the country, according to Tony Mauro of LegalTimes.

      His words reverberate strongly across Virginia, where civics education has been allowed to wither.

      So little government is taught between the 5th and 11th grades that many Virginians today cannot name three branches of government at the state or federal level, much less understand the separation of powers.

      How lacking is knowledge among students in Virginia?

      Ken Stroupe said the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, where he is chief of staff, found in a survey of high school and middle school students several years ago that:

      @ A third of students incorrectly thought that the Democratic Party is considered more conservative than the Republican Party.

      @ More than 30 percent did not know the name of Vice President Dick Cheney.

      @ More than 70 percent did not know the procedure by which a candidate is nominated to become president.

      @ Only 29 percent were able to name even one of Virginia’s two U.S. senators.

      @ Only 23 percent correctly knew that most bills introduced in Congress are rejected in committee and never reach the full House or Senate.

      @ More than half could not identify which branches of government are most susceptible to being influenced by lobbying and more than half said that did not know the purpose of a political action committee.

      Perhaps the lack of civics education had something to do with the unsurprising finding that only 10 percent of those responding to the survey selected civics as their favorite subject.
      Virginia’s evolving demographics alone help justify increasing civics offerings in schools as well as in after-school or other community settings because people should know their system of government. A state with an increasingly mobile and growing population has more people to familiarize with the basics of how government works.

      Half of Virginia’s residents were born outside the state, including a full 10 percent of the population born in another nation. No matter where they were born or where they went to school, Virginians have a better chance of improving life in the commonwealth the better they understand the civic life of their state and nation.

      Our system of representative democracy depends upon reasoned debate, negotiation and compromise. Success depends on the involvement of individuals who choose to participate in a political process that can bring about changes if enough people have the faith and understanding to make it work.

      Civil and bipartisan policy discussions work best when good faith, respect for others and understanding of how the process should work are shared as broadly among citizens as possible.

      Virginia and the nation have enough problems to solve without the misunderstanding and paralysis that can result when people lack the faith or knowledge to make government work.

Bob Gibson is executive director of the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia. The opinions expressed here are his own and not necessarily those of the institute. He was appointed on July 1 to the Virginia Commission on Civics Education.     

    Virginians who pay attention to politics are not likely to be disappointed this year if they like competitive elections.
    The Old Dominion, once a place of one-party predictability, is now blessed with a most pleasant sufficiency of contests, unlike each of the past two state cycles for legislative offices.

    Two years ago, 59 percent of House of Delegates elections featured only one candidate. This year, only 32 percent of House elections are uncontested.

    If competition is a good thing in politics as well as in the marketplace, then the good news is voter choice has expanded as Virginia has grown more competitive in statewide and legislative elections.

    Voters face the possibility of more close General Assembly contests as well as the certainty of more contested elections this year than two and four years ago.

    Of course, with the numbers of potentially tight races, Virginians will witness more expensive campaigns and record amounts of cash given to candidates from in-state and out-of-state donors.

    In Virginia, there are no limits on campaign contributions, so the sky and the moon may appear closer than the stacks of cash that campaigns hope to burn through from June to Nov. 3.

    A competitive race for governor between Democrat Creigh Deeds and Republican Bob McDonnell is the marquis multi-million-dollar contest certain to draw the most money, national attention and votes.

    Both parties have geographic diversity on their statewide tickets and a pair of Northern Virginia legislators facing off for attorney general in what promises to be a hard-fought race between GOP nominee Ken Cuccinelli and Democrat Steve Shannon.

    Deeds, a resident of Bath County near the West Virginia line, and his lieutenant governor running mate Jody Wagner of Virginia Beach live on the west and the east sides of the state.

    McDonnell got his political start in Virginia Beach as well and moved to suburban Richmond four years ago when he became attorney general while GOP running mate Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling started off and stayed in politics from Hanover County.

    But the real geographic diversity and surprising increase in competition this year is in the 68 contested House of Delegates elections all across the commonwealth.

    In 2007, only 41 of the 100 House elections were contested.

    In 2005, only 49 of the 100 House seats featured elections with at least two candidates.

    Now, places in Southwest Virginia and from Danville to Dumfries and Delaplane to Dayton have two-party competition.

    In all, it appears from campaign finance reports that 85 Republicans, 72 Democrats and 24 independents or members of smaller parties are seeking House seats on Nov. 3.

    Of course, the Nov. 3 election does not have to be the last word on who will sit in the House of Delegates, or even the Virginia Senate if Deeds and/or Cuccinelli manage to win statewide office.

    In fact, Charlottesville area Democrats are seriously discussing the possibilities for having a pair of special elections for General Assembly seats run into the second week of January if Deeds beats McDonnell for governor.

    The scenario many imagine involves a Deeds win and a quick special election near the end of December during which Delegate David Toscano, D-Charlottesville, is a leading candidate to succeed Deeds in the 25th Senate District.

      If Toscano were to run and win, a second local special election could be held in early January for the 57th House District seat that suddenly would be vacated by the former Charlottesville mayor.

      Toscano is considered very likely to seek the Senate if Deeds were to win on Nov. 3, and it is not certain what types of opposition he might face. Delegate Rob Bell, R-Albemarle County, is considered much more likely to wait for a future statewide bid for attorney general than to seek the Deeds seat in a Democratic-leading Senate district.

      Toscano could be an early and strong favorite for the Senate if such an opening develops and a win by him could leave many people eyeing a strong Democratic seat in a House district that includes all eight precincts in Charlottesville plus eight nearby in Albemarle County.

      Democratic Party leaders suggest that Mayor Dave Norris and former Mayor Blake Caravati are only two of a larger number of Charlottesville Democrats whom party leaders count as likely to eye the House seat if it were suddenly to open up late this year.

      Republicans note that Democrats may be counting chickens before the eggs hatch, but in an era when House and Senate seats involve campaigns with price tags shooting skyward Democrats contend it may be the early mayor who catches the prize before others even squirm. 

      With Democrats needing to pick up six seats from their current 45 to gain a majority in the 100-seat House, holding onto one in Charlottesville possibly could make a difference in which party gains a majority, or even parity, in the legislature that will convene Jan. 13. Republicans doubt the prospect of losing their majority while Democrats contend their party is still on a roll in Virginia. A dozen competitive House races could determine which party heads into the 2011 redistricting year holding a majority. 

Thanks to the fine folks at Monticello for the following 10 pieces of timeless wisdom from Thomas Jefferson, a man ready for Facebook and for email 200 years early!

“A man of habit and discipline, Jefferson compiled a list of ten rules of comportment for his namesake Thomas Jefferson Smith. It is a list any of us would be well advised to heed,“ the folks at his home say.

Thomas Jefferson’s Ten Rules:

1. Never put off tomorrow what you can do today.
2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.
3. Never spend your money before you have earned it.
4. Never buy what you don’t want because it is cheap.
5. Pride costs more than hunger, thirst and cold.
6. We seldom repent of having eaten too little.
7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
8. How much pain the evils have cost us that never happened.
9. Take things always by the smooth handle.
10. When angry, count ten before you speak, if very angry, count a hundred.

  It’s fun, every once in a while, to wander back and read a 5-year-old column and see how fresh it still feels. Here’s one that ran Sunday, Jan. 18, 2004, as my Political Notebook. It isn’t as stale as I feared. Perhaps Virginia still changes at the pace of dear old sea slugs. The headline then read:

Little bills, big impact on mores

RICHMOND—

    The boys are back in town, so a raft of creative little bills to regulate the reproductive mores and sexual rights of individuals are back on the table.

    The male-dominated and conservative atmosphere of the General Assembly remains conducive to protecting the right to bear arms and bear children. Virginia’s men look out for their women in peculiar ways.

    The best little bill in the 2004 session of the General Assembly is a small morality measure that could temporarily spare the life of a few convicted criminals.

    Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Manassas, introduced the measure to ban the execution of anyone who is pregnant.

Halting executions?

    This extremely limited moratorium on capital punishment is less a baby step toward elimination of the death penalty than perhaps an attempt to enshrine in the state code certain rights afforded a small number of the unborn.

    Marshall’s legislative creativity knows no rival in Richmond.

    A bill-drafting giant, he is smart, principled and owns a sizable sense of humor, but the unintended consequences of his anti-death penalty measure are hard to imagine and may exceed even Marshall’s ability to foresee.

    The value of sperm samples on death row could skyrocket. Who is to say when a female inmate there is not pregnant? After All, Marshall considers a woman pregnant before a fertilized egg is implanted in the uterus.

    In Virginia’s not-too-distant past, female lawbreakers and troublemakers could easily find themselves sterilized involuntarily, but the commonwealth abandoned such barbarity several decades ago.

    Death-penalty advocates could call for emergency contraception, or “morning after” pills on death row.

Promoting pregnancies?

    “All we are doing is encouraging sex in prison,“ said one legislative aide unsure if Marshall has anticipated fully the unforeseen effects of keeping pregnant women on death row locked up until they give birth.

    Inmate F2005 could be told to give a first and last kiss to her healthy, soon-to-be-motherless baby girl. The infant could become a poster child for banning executions.

    Expensive devices to detect and guard against contraband sperm may be needed on a more sterile death row where better-paid female guards would remain vigilant.

    Marshall’s other bills include a few that could curb abortion, which presumably would not be desired by a pregnant death row inmate unless she became depressed and suddenly wanted to speed her executiion.

    One bill to restrict abortions would require the procedure to be performed in a hospital “or in a medical facility or clinic located no more than 15 highway miles from a hospital emergency room.“

    Marshall’s legislative package includes more than life and death measures. The Manassas delegate also intends to protect the sanctity of heterosexual marriage from out-of-state gay couples who might enter into a civil union and then move to Virginia and seek some sort of official recognition of their status.

    His House Bill 727 is not named after an airplane bringing gay couples to relocate in Virginia, of all places, but is titled “Same sex marriage; impeachment of judge.“

    Just as Marshall does not trust governors to do the right thing by pregnant death-row gun molls, he isn’t too sure Virginia judges are to be trusted when civil unions are considered. His bill “provides that any judge who rules Virginia’s prohibition against marriage by persons of the same sex unconstitutional is deemed to have committed malfeasance in office and may be subject ti impeachment under the Virginia Constitution.“

    If threatening to impeach judges doesn’t do the trick to protect the sanctity of marriage, Marshall has another couple of bills, dubbed the Affirmation of Marriage Act, one of them an emergency measure. That act would provide that Virginia is under no legal obligation to recognize a marriage, civil union or partnership contract “or other arrangement purporting to bestow any of the privileges of obligations of marriage under the laws of another state ... unless such marriage conforms to the laws of this commonwealth.“

    One of the bills quotes former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean in its text as saying “that in terms of legal rights there is no practical difference between same-sex civil unions and marriages.“ Marshall asserts in the legislation that “neither status is needed for the exercise or enjoyment of civil rights by citizens with same sex attractions.“

    Marshall truly enjoys his status as the creative conservative gadfly of the House.

    “He is very dedicated to his cause and is always looking for new ways to promulgate legislation in the areas that are important to him,“ said Sen. Jeannemarie A. Delovites, R-Vienna.

    His efforts to enshrine his Roman Catholic beliefs about sex and marriage are becoming more and more the talk of the House.

-30-

      What happens when news coverage of campaigns and state and local governments starts to dry up?

      Do people rely more on the paid media bought by the candidates? Do voters scour the Internet for thoughts and newsy items on blogs?

      When campaign spending increases and hard news coverage decreases, will the anything-goes atmosphere of the Wild, Wild West replace the solid scoops of news that contain attribution and two or more sides of a story?

      An inveterate political junkie, I read blogs almost daily yet often find anonymous or poorly sourced attacks, heavy on emotional opinion.

      The Virginia General Assembly, which has all 100 of its House of Delegates seats on ballots this fall, is less and less observed and reported on by major media this year as newspapers and stations from Tidewater to Northern Virginia trim back coverage.

      Where many TV stations once considered government and politics important beats to cover, fewer commit to political coverage today. Radio coverage of the state’s politics and government has fallen off as well in recent years. Luckily, Charlottesville residents receive far more coverage of their state and local governments than many other Virginians, yet the trend toward less has hit here as well.

      Newspaper coverage of the General Assembly is lighter everywhere, a sad fact also true in other states, as more papers are doing less in state capitals. Stories are shorter and many items once covered get brief mention or are ignored. Individual major daily newspapers are dying.

      Especially at a time when there is more and more money pouring into politics, fewer reporters are following the money. This trend bodes ill.

      Virginia has been a relatively clean state politically for at least the past 60 years, but when newspapers and major media cut back routine coverage of who is influencing our government to do what, then there is no guarantee the state will stay clean. What positive image there is of government can be replaced all too swiftly by the taint of Illinois on the James.
      Another sad trend is the tendency for media consumers to live in an age of designer information. We all can design our own information sources to reflect our likes and prejudices so much that opposing views are either missing or more demonized than understood. We can pick whole networks and other sources of views and news to tell us pretty much what we want to hear.

      Sarah Palin fans watched her on the like-minded Fox News. Barack Obama supporters preferred his coverage on MSNBC.

      By contrast, one example of how people can come together to share different views took place at an issue forum last September that drew about 350 people in Danville to hear from congressional candidates Virgil Goode and Tom Perriello. Most of the audience who attended came supporting one of the two candidates and enjoyed cheering their guy. Afterward, many people commented that they appreciated the chance to really listen for a couple of hours to the other side.

    Our state and nation are split down the middle into partisan camps that don’t often meet each other. They don’t read and watch the same news. It’s little wonder that both major party brands have lost some luster. The independent, or generic, political brand may be growing as Democrats or Republicans each are demonized in the eyes of those increasingly getting news from more partisan sources.

      Virginia is in play today for both political parties in statewide races and, as such, is about to attract more money than ever to influence who runs our state. Just in the past two weeks, more than $2 million was pumped into gubernatorial campaigns and partisan groups to tout one side or attack another.

      No matter who wins the June 9 Democratic primary for governor among three candidates, this will be a historically expensive and hard-hitting general election campaign with more money behind negative ads than in any previous Virginia governor’s contest. It’s likely that Republican Bob McDonnell will join the attack after Democrats Creigh Deeds, Terry McAuliffe and Brian Moran finish their nomination fight. Any dirt deemed too radioactive for a campaign to throw will be tossed by other groups that might, or might not, operate independently and yet are well funded by the parties and their big donors.

      Polls show McAuliffe, a big-money magnet with a loud and magnetic personality, is a front-runner in the primary despite never having held or sought Virginia political office before. That said, polls are not predictive and are notoriously off in the spring because no one really knows who is very likely to vote in a rare June gubernatorial Democratic primary with perhaps only 5 to 7 percent of the state’s registered voters participating. Most voters have given Nov. 3 little thought.

      McDonnell leads all three Democrats in recent polling for hypothetical Nov. 3 matchups, but Mary Sue Terry and Jerry Kilgore, who also ran for governor of Virginia after winning attorney general elections, can testify to the reversible nature of leads in early polls. 

      McDonnell, who is unopposed for the GOP nomination, has been sidling over toward the middle of the Virginia electorate from his former position on the right. McDonnell, like McAuliffe, Deeds and Moran, will be casting himself as a nice guy with a lot of leadership skills. Each will seek to cast himself as a jobs-creating governor.

      As the money piles up in the governor’s race and in legislative contests viewed as competitive, let’s hope that many people follow the money. Neither party is being given lots of money to shrink government, so let the bloggers, the reporters and the interested public see who is trying to help or influence whom.

    WAKEFIELD

    Two big unknowns that could help determine who wins Virginia’s Nov. 3 governor’s race were unseen guests at the April 15 Shad Planking, a 61-year-old traditional Southside Virginia gathering where free beer mixes liberally with traditional good old boys and a new class of political junkies from all across Virginia.

    One is the prevalence of truly big money in more and more of the state’s political contests, starting with the huge money contest being waged for governor this year by four candidates.

    The other is the belief that each party has a lot to gain and a lot to lose by what happens in Washington during the first year of the Obama administration.

    Conservative Republicans, especially, are counting on failures by Obama and his policies to help the GOP regain the governor’s mansion after two straight losses while Democrats are hoping Obama’s 2008 victory in Virginia, the first by a Democrat for president in the Old Dominion since 1964, will somehow carry over into 2009 and help lift Democrats to new gains.

    The Shad Planking is a rare annual event at which individuals can size up and talk with political figures from both parties in a civil, almost party atmosphere.

    State Sen. Steve Martin, a Chesterfield County Republican, summed up the conventional wisdom that Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell, a former attorney general and delegate, is the current favorite to win the governor’s mansion no matter which one of three Democrats wins their party’s primary June 9th.

    “I see this as a great chance,“ Martin said “We’ve got the most experienced top two on our ticket that we’ve had in a long time,“ he said, referring to McDonnell and Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, who is seeking a second term.

    “I think Obama is going to continue to fall in popularity, as he has been,“ Martin said.

    McDonnell wasn’t as sure that Obama himself will become more unpopular, but said he thinks Obama’s policies are going to hurt Democrats in Virginia.

    “He is personally popular,“ McDonnell said. “He is charasmatic and I expect him to remain personally popular for a while.“ However, policies shaped and passed by Democratic majorities in Congress “will become more unpopular,“ he predicted.

    That includes energy policies that could drive up the cost of electricity, the GOP candidate said.

    McDonnell said he expects Obama to come across the Potomac at least a few times to campaign for the winner of the June 9 primary, whether the Democrat is Brian Moran, Creigh Deeds or Terry McAuliffe.

    McAuliffe is the Mister Money candidate in the race, and he flaunted that status Wesnesday at the Shad Planking by planting nearly 25,000 signs along routes to the event.

    With nearly 2,500 attendees at this year’s event, that amounts to 10 McAuliffe signs for everyone present, a new record that cost 70 cents per sign, or about $17,500 for signage plus the labor to put all the signs up and to take them all down.

    “There’s one Democratic campaign that really can hang with or go toe to toe with Bob McDonnell,“ McAuliffe campaign manager Mike Henry said of the sign prowess and big-money advantage of his candidate.

    Deeds, who was campaigning elsewhere and did not attend, and Moran, also chose not to engage in the sign wars, but McDonnell campaign manager Phil Cox said his candidate’s name was up on 6,000 signs on routes approaching the event.

    McAuliffe’s big money and sign display was a constant theme of barbs from Moran and McDonnell.

    Moran’s campaign gave away hundreds of plastic beer cups that tweaked McAuliffe with the printed slogan, “Money Isn’t Everything. Fighting for Virginia Is.“

    McDonnell told the crowd, “I really want to thank Terry for the $2.6 million he’s pumped into the Virginia economy over the past few months.“

    “He’s created 100 jobs,“ the Republican nominee said of the rich Democrat’s large staff. He then derided McAuliffe’s union ties and Hillary and Bill Clinton connections by joking that McAuliffe “belongs to Clinton Local 456.“

    McAuliffe served as Bill Clinton’s national Democratic Party chairman and as Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager last year. The Clintons have given him $10,000 for his campaign and two top Clinton contributors have contributed half a million to a campaign that brought in $4.2 million during the first three months of this year, about $2 million more than second place McDonnell. Deeds and Moran collected the vast majority of their contributions from Virginians while 82 percent of the huge McAuliffe warchest and most of McDonnell’s first-quarter contributions this year were from out-of-state.

    Moran joked that McAuliffe was really so new to the Shad Planking that down among the traditional beer trucks “he started setting up a martini bar.“

    Jokes aside, the impact of McAuliffe’s new stratosphere of campaign cash is one of the big open questions of this year.

    No one knows what effects a big infusion of cash and a huge staff can have in a June Democratic Party primary in which perhaps 7 to maybe 9 percent of the state’s registered voters can be expected to participate.

    “Anybody who talks with authority doesn’t know what’s going to happen,“ said George Allen, a Republican former governor and U.S. senator who received a warm welcome from the crowd and was the subject of a campaign sign someone planted supporting him for president in 2012. “It’s hard to determine.“

    Recent polls have shown Moran running slightly ahead of McAuliffe, who was running slightly ahead of Deeds. McDonnell fared well in hypothetical head-to-head matchups.

    As for the impact of Obama’s popularity on this year’s statewide elections, Allen said, “It depends on the decisions he makes between now and then.“ He said Obama was clearly very popular last year and if the presidential election were “held today he’ll probably do alright.“

    McDonnell appears to be the early favorite. Perhaps McAuliffe is attempting to create the image of a towering figure with a towering campaign bank account. He appeared to hold his own as a speaker countering the jokes and tweaks from McDonnell and Moran and touting his ability to create new jobs as a successful businessman.

    But McAuliffe’s electabilty in Virginia, or anywhere, is untested. A campaign run as if it had a sense of inevitability about it did not work for Hillary Clinton when he ran her effort last year.

    Perhaps Obama’s impact on the race will be the biggest unknown. It could come down to how well the American and world economies perform during the next six months. That could be a factor bigger than McAuliffe’s pile of cash or even Obama’s ability to shape world events.

    It’s even possible that pirates from Somalia could have an influence thousands of miles away and with absolutely no regard for how world events play out in Virginia’s elections. 

    The Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia will host an Issues Forum with the three candidates vying for the Democratic nomination for governor in the June 9 primary: Creigh Deeds, Brian Moran, and Terry McAuliffe.

    This event will be held in Danville on Tuesday evening April 28 from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research.

    The event will be moderated by me and by former Danville Mayor Linwood Wright.

    WVTF Public Radio in Roanoke, Blacksburg and Charlottesville is actively exploring the possibility of a live broadcast of the forum. A full podcast will be made available on the Sorensen Newsroom http://www.sorenseninstitute.org following the event.

    This issues forum will be free and open to the public. It will be co-sponsored by the Danville Register & Bee.
 
    GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell was invited but declined the Danville event with the three Democrats but is invited to appear at a separate Sorensen event in May, also in Danville.

    In addition to the gubernatorial event on April 28, all four candidates for lieutenant governor in the June 9 primary have agreed to a forum at the University of VIrginia on Sunday, March 29.

    Democrats Jody Wagner, Michael Signer, Pat Edmonson and Jon Bowerbank will appear at the forum in Clark Hall from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Sunday, which I will moderate for the University of Virginia Young Democrats.

    The YD forum is free and open to the public.

  Virginia’s political traditions are changing faster than the late Sen. Harry Flood Byrd Sr. could have imagined or tolerated.

  Byrd ruled Virginia’s dominant political organization with a tight fist from the 1920s to the 1960s.

  The Old Dominion, once pregnant with presidents and barren since Woodrow Wilson left the state a few ticks before the Civil War, has its first Roman Catholic governor in Tim Kaine, who was elected nearly four years ago.

  Now three of the four men vying to succeed Kaine are Catholic: leaving only Creigh Deeds, a Presbyterian like Wilson, the only non-Catholic in the contest.

  What’s the big deal with that, a young Virginia voter might ask.

  Not that much these days, which is a bit of a change. Religion still matters to many voters, but not in the ways it did several decades back when Catholics and any number of other minorities could count more ways they were excluded than included in top political and social circles.

  Virginia each year more resembles a Mid-Atlantic state than a traditional Southern state. The political center of the state has moved north and east as population shifts have added relatively more voters to Northern Virginia and Tidewater.

  While Buckingham County remains the geographic center of Virginia, Fredericksburg is more like the population center.

  The issues of the old South appealing to racial, ethnic and religious prejudices sound foreign and contrived to increasing majorities of Virginians.

  The heavy suburbanization of Virginia has left Fairfax County and every locality touching it the political colossus of the state, while vast portions of the remainder of Virginia resemble the sprawling Lord Fairfax more and more.

  Voting patterns also begin to mimic Fairfax somewhat while more and more non-native Virginians seek and are accepted in meaningful community leadership roles.

  Half of Virginians were born outside the state, many in states from Maryland to New York and New England. They often bring partisan predispositions with them that reflect the region from which they moved.

  One in 10 Virginians was born outside the country, a fivefold increase in the proportion of immigrants since 1970.

  An impressive 40 percent of these foreign-born Virginians are from Asia now and 36 percent are from Latin America.

  This trend is especially strong in Northern Virginia and in Charlottesville, where the University of Virginia accepts thousands of out-of-state students and Asian and Hispanic students from around the country and across the world, many of whom stay on in Virginia.

  The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star reported March 4 that UVa has surveyed the class of 2003 and found that up to one in five non-Virginians stays on to become a long-term resident.

  The university, which has about 31 percent of its students come from other states, found that 14 percent who graduated with baccalaureate degrees still lived in the state five years later.

  A full 20 percent of graduate-degreed non-Virginia natives made the state their home five years later.

  New Virginians have accelerated the state’s trend from Southern conservative to two-party competitive. 

  Now half of the voting population, Virginians born elsewhere are not as anti-immigration as the state once was, nor are they as interested in where someone goes to church or where they were born. Having three out of four Catholic candidates for governor means little to them, just as having the same three gubernatorial candidates running as men born in other states doesn’t bother them.

  One sure sign that Byrd would be lost in today’s Virginia is Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s legislative victory allowing him March 9 to sign a bill banning smoking in Virginia’s restaurants on Dec. 1 unless they have an enclosed and separately ventilated room.

  Virginia, a former tobacco and agricultural state, is now one of the nation’s ten wealthiest states with a service and information-based economy.

  Virginia is the first Southern state to adopt a restaurant smoking ban. Tobacco no longer rules and can’t even get a seat at the lunch table.

  Virginians are growing more diverse than in previous decades.

  Political candidates at all levels are adopting new inclusiveness in their language as voters want to see government do what works, what is practical and what does not offend the newer voters of the Old Dominion.

    First, there were the Ten Commandments. A serious list. Instructive. Godly.
    Several millennia later, there was David Letterman’s Top Ten. Sly. Insulting. Ungodly.
    List making, once the province of grocery shoppers and Myers-Briggs personalities whose types end in J, has spread like wildfire through social networks—from the columns of newspapers to the cyber diaries of teens. 

    As lists go, Facebook’s “25 Random Things About Myself” has got millions of Americans typing. Revealing. Appealing. Redressing Ego.

    Virginia’s vibrant political culture, which once listed right and now writes lists, has discovered a central list of a few dozen flagrant factoids.
    This 25-point compendium of Commonwealth commonalities is not carved in stone but was instead found taped to the heel of George Washington’s right boot in the middle of Thomas Jefferson’s restored State Capitol. (I can’t say why my list was taped there and fully disclaim all responsibility for listing 25 so obvious things.)
    1.  Rampant hubris, once a cash crop of Wall Street elites, is now smoked in Virginia’s political parlors. Once inhaled, this potent drug of “I know best and you know so much less” promotes memory loss and pork consumption.

    2.  Humility, its powerful antidote, sits unconsumed in surplus warehouses.

    3.  Speaking of smokes, Richmond feels disoriented at having to turn its back on a cigarette pack in restaurants. A town built on tobacco finds that quitting cold turkey can induce a splitting headache.

    4.  Richmond needs a patch. Perhaps a large green corporate-sponsored patch with a diamond would be the kind of civic place to bring baseball back to a town whose largest monuments are former tobacco warehouses and abandoned baseball stadiums. 

    5.  Politicians can be bad for baseball. Their attempts to lure teams with offers of taxpayer-enhanced stadiums turn off fans before falling far shy of shovel-ready stimulus status.

    6.  Virginia is so ready for a real, shovel-ready stimulus that a dash of bipartisanship could restore some faith that what flows out of Washington can taste better than Potomac swill. 

    7.  Entitlement is practiced far less in the housing industry and far more in the corridors of power. Politicians feel entitled to promulgate their types of stimulus. See No. 1.

    8. The media would cover “Promulgate” if it were a scandal involving sex at a high school prom.

    9. Bipartisanship is the most widely subscribed-to trend in politics.

    10.  Despite being given tons of lip service, bipartisanship remains vastly under-practiced. If everyone who praised bipartisan cooperation in policy discussions actually practiced the art, much more good would flow from government.

    11. People say they want good news from politics. And they want practical answers from government.

    12. People expect bad news.  They know partisan gridlock and the permanent campaign can block any progress.

    13. People get less than they deserve.  Voters would like more compromise and results, not rigidity.

    14. Despite Nos. 1-7, politicians tend to be good people.

    15. Politicians get a bad rap from far fewer than 10 percent of their ilk.

    16. The well more than 90 percent of ethical politicians often find themselves stymied by the poisons of the permanent campaign.

    17. Ethics, which is obedience to the unenforceable, is enjoying a timely revival.

    18. Commandments I-X still inform ethics.

    19. A revival of ethical and practical politics is under way on both sides of the aisle.

    20. Republicans and Democrats actually do work well together more often than people realize or than the media reports. Outbreaks of good news tend to be lost somewhere behind sports.

    21. For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. There is a time to be partisan, usually around election time.

    22. “Now the time has come. There are things to realize,“ to quote The Chambers Brothers. “The rules have changed today.“

    23. The economy is in enough of a mess to try a time to break down and a time to build up.

    24. As Jefferson said 214 years ago, “Our citizens are divided into two political sects. One which fears the people most, the other the government.“ Fear of economic collapse could again break down old lines and reorder priorities enough to recharge the pursuit of happiness.

  25. Most politicians pay their taxes like regular folks, and when they don’t they deserve a non-cash stimulus to do better.

Attorney General Bob McDonnell announced today that he will resign from that office effective Feb. 20.

McDonnell, the Republican nominee for governor in the Nov. 3 election, is my guest on WVTF public radio’s Evening Edition program tonight from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m.

If you have a question for the Republican nominee for governor, give a listen to WVTF (88.5 FM in Charlottesville) and give a call to the program after it starts.

McDonnell’s top deputy, former state senator Bill Mims of Loudoun County, is expected to be appointed by the General Assembly to succeed McDonnell.

McDonnell will face the winner of a three-way Democratic Party primary on June 9 featuring Creigh Deeds, Terry McAuliffe and Brian Moran.

WVTF can be Heard Across Central/Western/and Southwestern Virginia on the following FM frequencies:
89.1 –89.1 Roanoke & Lynchburg
88.5 - Charlottesville
89.3 - Charlottesville, Waynesboro & Staunton
95.9 Orange
101.9 - Lexington
91.9 - Marion, Wytheville & Galax
90.1 - Abingdon, Bristol & Big Stone Gap
90.3 - Clintwood
90.9 - St. Paul
90.5 Wise & Coeburn
91.7 - Norton
91.3 - Pound

Robert Saunier “R.S.“ Hornsby’s death near Crozet was a true loss.
Follow one of the links to a great R.S. Hornsby and Bruce Hornsby tribute to the Dead’s Garcia at William and Mary Hall.
Thanks to Bringier McConnell for the following news piece:

http://www.wydaily.com/read_article.php?article=1677

R.S. Hornsby

R.S. Hornsby Killed in Car Accident
WYDaily Staff  
Posted: Today

Musician R.S. Hornsby was killed Thursday in a single-car accident not far from his Charlottesville home. He was the son of Bobby and Ann Hornsby.

The 28-year-old guitarist was alone in the car when it crashed into a tree around 11:30 p.m. Police said he had been wearing a seatbelt but was killed on impact.

Hornsby, who would’ve turned 29 Jan. 24, frequently joined his uncle Bruce during performances. A December 2005 performance at William and Mary Hall, with Bruce on piano and vocals and R.S. on guitar, produced a plaintive, soaring version of the Grateful Dead’s “Standing on the Moon.“ Bruce Hornsby called the song a tribute to a “fallen friend,“ the Dead’s Jerry Garcia, who had died 10 years earlier.

The Hornsby family paid tribute to R.S. on his website, saying they believed “that now is a time not to gratify the theft of death but to celebrate the joy of life. All of you who loved R.S. Hornsby are encouraged to share love, hope, joy and music with each other far and wide.“

On his website, Bruce Hornsby left this message: “R.S. was such a great person, so bright and funny, and a beautiful, soulful musician who moved so many. It’s a huge, deep loss for our family.“

Funeral arrangements have not yet been finalized.

Charitable donations in memory of R.S. Hornsby may be made to the Boston Red Sox’s Jimmy Fund or to Episcopal High School.

Take Rod Blagojevich. Please!
Blagojevich is the fourth of the eight most recent Illinois governors to run afoul of the law, or at least win the right to a trial on charges that make Illinois residents cringe.
The poster boy for reform apparently likes to sell things, such as hospital building contracts and perhaps a Senate seat, although the newly minted Senator from Illinois, Roland Burris, may be allowed to play without having paid.
Before Blagojevich could be stripped of his office, a move that takes weeks, he was able to tweak all foes and critics by making an apparently legal appointment.
Whatever bad taste he leaves, the governor _ once elected as a reform candidate saying citizens deserved better _ follows a long tradition in his state of taking a crooked path to power while claiming to clean up a mess. He made people forget the previous mess by creating a bigger one.
In politics, things can turn on a dime _ or about as quickly on a trillion dollars.
Whatever Virginia’s faults, the Old Dominion is not Illinois.
But Virginia’s politicians are more quick these days to call each other, well, liars.
The L word gets tossed around like a bad penny, cheapening discourse.

People who lie could deserve to be called liars, and those who pander might merit the label panderer, but let’s not insist on throwing harsh labels around when specific dialogue and measured language often better serve better ends.

If someone in elected office said that he was going to vote one way and instead voted another way, it’s better to simply point that fact out rather than resort to calling him a liar.

The overuse of labels may be popular among political consultants, but it cheapens the value of political conversation.

Scratch any Virginia political figures and there’s more in common under the surface than their rhetoric might indicate.

Even liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans can find common cause on many grounds if they try—and if they haven’t pummeled each other with lousy labels.

So to earn the trust of Virginians, and each other, the state’s political class, and even its reporters, could adopt the following 10-point test.

Here are 10 simple steps to the top of the trust meter, starting with the easiest.

1. Telling the truth beats telling people anything else unless it’s both very funny and very harmless.

2. Showing respect to people leads to greater trust.

3. Listening more than talking shows respect.

4. Positive attempts to reach out to people provide political proof that honey trumps vinegar.

5. Look people in the eye and share a sincere and positive belief you have about them or their family or town.

6. Search for, find and build on some belief or goal you have in common with any political adversary.

7. Use humor against yourself, not against political victims.

8. Ask people about their needs, their likes and their loves.

9. Ask questions politely that do not trap people or point to obvious answers.

10. Thank people for their time, their talents and their attention.

Fresh off the news of his fundraising success in the Virginia governor’s race, Terry McAuliffe showed up at the John Paul Jones Arena on Thursday night wearing, well, not quite the right color of blue sweater for a University of Virginia game against North Carolina.

As McAuliffe took his front-row seat courtside next to John and Renee Grisham, more than a few Wahoo fans noticed that McAuliffe’s sweater was a significantly lighter blue than Virginia’s dark blue hue.

The front-running candidate of three Democrats in the money race approaching the June 9 Democratic Party primary for governor, McAuliffe had not committed the cardinal mistake of wearing a baby blue sweater to the basketball game dominated by the Tar Heels, but his sweater was a noticeably moderate blue.

Not to worry about such things, McAuliffe kept up a lively conversation with John and Renee while the man who had been sitting next to him disappeared and reappeared a few minutes later with a Virginia hat.

McAuliffe put the hat on.

Either he was newly self-conscious about the color of his sweater or it was a bit chilly in JPJ, but the baseball-style hat wasn’t enough for McAuliffe.

At halftime, McAuliffe doffed a dark blue Virginia jacket with orange lettering, completing his transition from a moderate blue fan to one wearing Virginia colors.

UNC easily triumphed in the game, 83-61, and the dark-blue jacketed McAuliffe stayed with the Grishams through to the bitter end. 

Some people must be blogging about it because more than 60 individuals signed the electronic petition in the 48 hours since this weekend started.

The comments of some of the signers pretty much say it all. To see or sign the petition, visit: http://www.petitiononline.com/tv4rubin/petition.html.

These are the signers of the past day or so with the comments they added next to their names:

Name Comments Address, Zip Code
244. Linda Smith excellent local news perspective and guests 23669

243. John Westbrook Due to the canceling of On The Record, the general public no longer has the opportunity to be informed of important issues affecting our state and local area. Local news is grossly inadequate to deliver a comprehensive view of the complicated issues facing all of us today. On The Record is able to accomplish this. 1232 Heathcliff dr., Virginia Beach, VA 23464

242. Jeffry A. Sachs The Tidewater area needs and deserves this show to be on the air.

241. John and Cortney Doucette This show was a valuable source of news and thoughtful discussion of important public issues. We hope it will return. 23704

240. Martha S. McClees On The Record offered a non-partisan, issue oriented discussion on local , regional and state issues. It is the type of programming we need more of, not less!

239. Jim Wood WVEC’s short-sighted decision to cancel OTR has left a void in local civic affairs programming. We look forward to Joel’s return to the airwaves!

238. Peter Kane

237. Carlton Bennett I strongly support this show and miss information provided about current local issues. 120 S. Lynnhaven Rd., Va. Beach, VA 23452

236. david meadows We strongly support This show. 1961 diamond springs road,virginia beach,virginia 23455

235. Sandy Craig 23452

234. Claire Gastanaga We need more, not less, public affairs programming! 23219

233. Cyane D. Williams 108 A Oakhurst Circle, Charlottesville, VA 22903

232. Mona Saferstein A first class journalist

231. C.A. Liebler

230. Steve Liles 3634 Point Elizabeth Dr. Chesapeake, VA 23321

229. Joel Rubin Thank you all very much for your comments. It’s nice to see that others care. Stay tuned for a comeback. 1213 Heathcliff Drive, VB 23464

228. Paul Silverman

227. Susan Hurley Va. Beach, Va.

226. Jim Hoeft Chesapeake, VA

225. Peter Schmidt A first class program - hurry back, Joel!

224. Worth Remick Hampton Roads needs a regional venue and forum like On the Record and Joel as moderator so we can, in a traditional medium like television, discuss relevant issues and personalities affecting our region. A TV program like On the Record is far, far more important than probably over 90 per cent of ‘normal program’ TV.

223. Kerry C. Jordan bring him back! 23462

222. Michael Goldberg GET THE SHOW BACK ON PLEASE!!!

221. Tammie Freeman

220. Thomas R. Garrett It was ashame that WVEC discontinued airing On The Record. Joel’s show was timely and informative. 23435

219. Carol Senechal Norfolk, VA 23508

218. Lewis A. Greenhouse This petition should be sent to the FCC

217. Lisa Jardanhazy

216. Phyllis Ander I’ll keep my fingers crossed! vabeach 23462

215. Stephanie Himel-Nelson 23323

214. Sean Tubbs 22903

213. Phil Kellam Joel Rubin remained a gentleman while provoking guests to share their perspectives on timely issues in a civil manner. Frankly, now more than ever, we need broadcast forums like OTR to facilitate inclusive, informed discussions on our region; our state and our nation. The folks that own the public airwaves certinly deserve more complete news reporting from local programers than the nightly newscasts providing information “sugar-highs”. 23456

212. Martin Silfen The decision to cancel was a media injustice 2405 Ketch Court VB 23451

211. Richard W. Yancey

210. albert saferstein On the Record represented an unbiased review of timely important events and interviews with key persons representing opposing positions. The diversification of subject matter was newsworthy and of substantial interest to citizens throughout Hampton Roads! Clearly, Joel would make a good fit for the national news scene

209. Rosemary Wilson local information and programming that is so needed to keep people informed

208. Betty Jo Gwaltney

207. harry lester

206. Eric Schmudde One of the most dedicated local content shows on tv. Why not go ahead and cancel the news,too. 23451

205. Richard Powell 209 53rd St Virginia Beach VA 23451

204. E. Dana Dickens I support Joel Rubin’s On the Record

203. Ashley Hallmark

202. Martha M. Raiss We miss the fabulous coverage of local issues! 1440 S. Veaux Loop, Norfolk, 23509

201. Ben Krause Keep On the Record on the air

200. cecelia tucker

199. Rick Schoew

198. Nancy Loewenberg

197. John N. Skirven The Bottom Line has a large mature audience. Baby Boomers watch, think, buy and vote.

196. Mike Barrett

195. myles louria On the Record has been a mandatory stop for elected officials in the Hampton Roads area and around the state for years. Why give that type of quality public affairs programming up?

194. Bruce Laderberg 402 Oak Grove Rd Norfolk, VA 23505

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