Rick Gray
The Jollie Olde Deadlocke
By Rick Gray
Jul 16, 2008 - 3:13:31 PM

Given contemporary conditions, the General Assembly’s recent deadlock was perhaps the best outcome we could have expected.
Obviously, the GA should plug the deficit in VDOT’s maintenance budget – especially for bridges and tunnels.
And, had it raised the gasoline tax a few pennies to fund serious mass transit, promote car-pooling, or convert city streets to bike lanes, its children would have risen up and called it blessed.
But in these uncertain times, with gasoline already at $4.00/gallon, we need not spend a dime on new roads.
Whether Governor Kaine realizes it yet, Virginians have begun to sense the passing of an old way of life.
The once-proud owner of the outsized pickup now gazes with envy upon the neighbors’ Prius.
The prudent home-builder files away plans for the sprawling, exurban development and begins boning up on the New Urbanism.
The thrifty parent informs the middle-schooler that his driver’s license will have to wait until his eighteenth birthday.
The neighbor who works in Accounting emails to suggest a car-pool.    
It’s not easy letting go of a lifestyle that has “gone with the wind”, but there’s a certain satisfaction in getting down to the practical task of planning a new one.  In this, at least, there are worse role-models than Scarlett O’Hara.
But adapting to the new begins with accepting the passing of the old.  In Virginia’s case, that means accepting the fact that – with rare exceptions – new roads are a waste of money.
That’s why – at least until reality dawns on the General Assembly – a deadlock which produces no new transportation money is far from the worst thing that could have happened.
That said, the recent Special Session is nothing for Virginians to take pride in.
First, there’s Tim Kaine – a nice guy with a good heart who seems destined to go down in history as one of Virginia’s more ineffective governors.  
I feel a bit sorry for Kaine.  He radiates sweet reason – a faith that people of goodwill can sit down and compromise their differences in a spirit of give-and-take.  That approach served him well as Mayor of Richmond, but City Council is a litter of kittens compared with Virginia’s House of Delegates.  
The House – under its present Republican leadership – isn’t interested in negotiating.  It wants your lunch money, your new sneakers, and – if you’re not suitably humble – it’s not beyond doing to you what Jesse Jackson fantasizes doing to Barack Obama.
The House Republicans – or at least, their dominant faction – act like a cross between al Qaeda and a street gang.
Like Osama’s fanatics, they’re true believers.
They believe that the solution to violence in our society is to arm everyone to the teeth.
That the key to strong families is to be darn sure gay people can’t have families.
That building a new testing bureaucracy is better for kids than paying for better teachers.
Most of all, they apparently believe that all taxes are evil and that government – if we must have government at all – should be supported by voluntary contributions from liberal do-gooders and the proceeds of bake sales.
Like a street gang, House Republicans encourage each other to ever more extreme demonstrations of political machismo.  They posture for each other like adolescents trying to prove their manhood.  If they didn’t have power, they’d be pathetic – like the good ol’ boy whose tombstone bore his last words:  “Here, Bubba.  Hold my beer and watch this.”
The whole scenario is vaguely reminiscent of England a millennium ago.  While the Britons of the coast were being regularly savaged by Viking rovers, the throne was occupied by a vacillating weakling known to history as Aethelred the Redeless.  (Though popular tradition renders this Aethelred the Unready, a better translation is Aethelred the Ill-Counseled.)
Aethelred repeatedly bought off the invaders with gold, but they kept coming back, each time upping their price.  Eventually, Aethelred’s own son – the warlike Edmund Ironside – defied him, raised an army, and took the field.  But Aethelred soon died, followed shortly by Edmund, and the throne passed to a Viking prince, Canute.
Obviously, no historical analogy is perfect.  Unlike Aethelred, Governor Kaine isn’t trying to buy off the barbarians.  Instead, he calls them into Special Session and – when they do nothing – taunts them with comparisons to Seinfeld.  
Kaine’s resemblance to Aethelred isn’t about courage.  It lies in the poor advice he has consistently gotten from the people who are supposed to help him govern.
Moreover, the House Republicans are not – except in their fantasies – a band of Vikings.  For all their feigned machismo, they more resemble a hoard of constipated accountants – perpetually grumpy, but not exactly the sort who could don a horned helm and wield a double-headed battleaxe without looking like something out of Monty Python.
Embarrassing, isn’t it?
This Commonwealth – which once produced, in a single generation, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Henry, and Marshall – can today do no better than Tim the Redeless and the Nerds Who Say “Ni”.

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