When I went to Pennsylvania to canvas for Obama before the primary, Tim Kaine spoke to us at the Wilkes-Barre headquarters. I had very much liked his speech in response to Bush's 2006 SOTUS, in which he laid out a better way for our future, and he did not disappoint that morning. He had us all fired up to go out and brave the rural Pennsy electorate.
Governor Kaine is a very intelligent and engaging man. He is not boring. He does not have baggage. He has run a state. He has not had to cast votes in Congress that the Republican spin machine can cast in a bad light. He, too, went to Harvard, which does not have a weird, God help us, Skull and Crossbones secret society, but has a positive, uplifting open atmosphere that emphasizes learning and solutions, not the macabre. Heaven knows, we've had enough of secrecy and death under this administration, and we are gasping for a breath of fresh air and change.
After Kaine spoke, I stood in line to shake his hand. I was struck by his direct eye contact and how he actually listened to what I said and how pleasantly he conversed.
I have met countless politicians, who (I will not mention names) have given me a brisk handshake, while looking past my shoulder, and did not answer my questions, because they weren't paying attention and clearly could not care less about what I had to say.
I have met countless politicians, who (I will not mention names) are surrounded by sycophantic handlers, who make sure he can not hear what you have to say, because they literally handle you and keep you at arm's length. Kaine was accompanied by his son, who was very sweet.
I would like to have change, not only in my President, but have a Vice President, who is not only the antithesis of Darth Cheney in morality, but a sort of Jedi Knight, who can ably vanquish the negative smear-meisters with speed and aplomb. A Vice Presdident who can think and talk well on his feet and actually care about what I and my fellow Americans have to say. I would like to have a Vice President, who can face us alone, without an entourage of yes-men. I would like a Vice President, who adds to the ticket, not subtracts from it or dulls it. Particularly, if he comes from a southern, red state. I'd like to add red to the blue.
Tim Kaine has run the state of Virginia very well. Virginia has top state schools and has an excellent business climate, even in the wake of the bleak Bush years. Virginia is south of the Mason Dixon line, and we could use a southerner on the ticket to help those folks kick back and feel at home in our party.
Call me hopelessly naive, but I have not written off southern states. Southerners have suffered the worst under Republican rule. They have witnessed the negligence and the wrong-headed policies first hand, and it wasn't pretty. My God, they lost a city!
The extreme weather has brought unheard of twisters to Georgia and category 5 hurricanes to southern shores. The heat has been unbearable. Global warming, which the Republicants tried to pretend didn't exist, is a reality for southerners. The cost to keep one home cool, which is nothing to rich men like Bush, Cheney, and McCain, who has so many houses, he loses track of them, is skyrocketing along with the cost to drive distances along country roads in the pick-up with little or no public transportation to ease the burden.
Southerners are now beginning to realize that they were tricked, bamboozled, and hoodwinked through their faith, to elect men, who have turned out to be two snake oil salesmen, who are as far from Jesus as they come, and have literally left death & destruction in their wake, and folks down south are ripe for change.
Tim Kaine will make them feel more down home. He will help to dispel the overt effort made by the Republican spin machine to cast our Obama as foreign. Geesh, even the very pleasing attention he paid to his grandmother and sister, visiting them in Hawaii with his family, was fair game to be twisted into a xenophobic faux pas.
Speaking of the Republican spin machine, watch how adeptly, strongly, yet genteelly, Tim Kaine uses the force of truth and the light saber of quick wit and keen intellect to keep Karl Rove, the nexus of the evil Dark Side, at bay in this clip. He doesn't meander off topic and babble, but gets right to the point, and he gets his point across well & succinctly, in the time allotted.
Incidentally, for them to pull the big gun Rove out to thwart Kaine on the teevee, you know that the Republicans want to sideline him for a reason: they fear he's an asset to the Obama ticket and will make it difficult for them to portray him as something fearful and foreign to their supposed base, which is slipping away and will accelerate toward us, their safety net, if we bring Governor Kaine aboard our life raft.
Obama and Kainehave a lot in common: both have Kansas roots, earned Harvard Law degrees, married their Harvard Law School sweethearts, have taken off time from lucrative careers to do civil rights work, earned their offices in city politics the hard way, neither having been born with political connections (Kaine's father had an iron-work shop), but their commonality should be a plus, not a minus.
The same reasons we support Obama apply to Kaine. Their positive personality, ability to communicate and connect with a crowd, and above all their commitment to change and finding a better way for our future is something we need doubly much after 8 years of double trouble: Bush & Cheney.
Double our pleasure, double our fun, with two, count 'em, two smart, altruistic, good guys who work for CHANGE!