Given my role as TAPPED's resident VP Hater (witness my posts hating on Chet Edwards, Sam Nunn, and Evan Bayh), I feel obliged to pour cold water on the flavor of the day: Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine.
As with most potential VPs, Kaine has a great resumé. He's a successful Democratic governor of a traditionally red state that has the potential to go blue this year. He was elected in 2005, weirdly enough, by opposing the death penalty; when the Republican nominee, then-Attorney General Jerry Kilgore, ran an ad saying Kaine wouldn't execute Hitler, Kaine responded by drawing on his Catholic faith.
But as Melissa McEwan points out, Kaine's social views and his stance on Iraq are pretty problematic. Just as his Catholic views led him to oppose the death penalty, so too do they lead him to oppose abortion rights. In a piece for TAP Online from 2005, Rob Graver wrote that Kaine's "views on abortion are roughly in line with those of George W. Bush." Indeed, NARAL declined to endorse his run in 2005 due to his support for parental notification and consent laws and bans on "partial-birth" abortion.
His record on gay rights isn't much better. He opposes civil unions, and while he claimed to oppose the state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage that passed last year, he declined to veto legislation placing it on the ballot. Perhaps worst of all, in the 2005 governor's race his campaign mocked Kilgore's effeminate voice, and even ran an ad titled "Weak", calling Kilgore "too weak to lead Virginia" and adding "Jerry Kilgore is not being straight." It'd be one thing for Obama to choose an anti-choice running mate; picking an anti-choice gay-baiter is even worse.
Even Kaine's Iraq position is questionable. While he was not in Congress in 2002, and thus not on the record about the war, he went out of his way during gubernatorial run to say that it would send "a horrible message" to "cut and run", and used his inaugural address to compare the war in Iraq to the American revolution, saying that Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson "stood here at a time, just as today, when Virginians serving freedom's cause sacrificed their lives so that democracy could prevail over tyranny."
Tim Kaine is a great governor. Perhaps there's a cabinet post he'd be well-suited for. If Jim Webb gets appointed secretary of defense, he’d be a natural choice for the Senate. But not the vice presidency.
--Dylan Matthews
