Curiosities

Veteran politicos have seen some very well-run campaigns in the commonwealth over the years, and some very poorly run campaigns. But perhaps not since Ben "Cooter" Jones tried to unseat 7th District Rep. Eric Cantor have they seen a prominent campaign as odd as that of gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds.

Deeds won the Democratic nomination through a combination of political aikido -- he let his primary opponents throw haymakers while he glided right past them -- and a Washington Post endorsement based in large measure on the belief that Deeds "would make transportation his first priority."

Yet this summer Deeds has tried to start a bare-knuckle brawl with the GOP's Bob McDonnell on social issues, despite representations in their first debate that he wasn't interested in doing so ("We can't be continually dividing our citizens along the social mores . . . . I've never made social policy a huge part of my campaign"). His vaunted transportation policy consists of . . . promising to build consensus, and an admission that he would sign a tax hike if one landed on his desk.

Recently Deeds made what was billed as a major policy address. Yet it was delivered, as NationalJournal.com noted, "to a small crowd in a basement auditorium at George Mason University." It contained no new policy proposals, merely repeating charges that McDonnell was out of step with the mainstream on social issues.

Deeds has rebuffed McDonnell's call that he state his views on issues such as card check and cap-and-trade, arguing that those federal questions have no relevance to the governorship. Yet he is airing campaign spots linking himself to Barack Obama and McDonnell to George W. Bush.

Strangest of all, Deeds continues to commit the same cardinal sin he accuses McDonnell of committing. When McDonnell suggested using some general-fund revenue for road-building, Deeds accused him of diverting money from the public schools. Yet Deeds continues to float proposals that would do precisely that.

The other day, for instance, Deeds unrolled a new slogan for an existing idea: refunding payroll taxes for small businesses that create jobs. As he said in Charlottesville: "Create a job, get a tax credit. It's that simple."

Not quite. A tax credit reduces the amount of general-fund revenue available for education just as much as a highway appropriation would. If spending $10 million to build an interchange diverts money from the public schools, then forgoing $10 million to encourage job creation also diverts money from the public schools.

The same goes for other Deeds proposals -- such as spending $15 million to build biomass energy plants; providing sales-tax exemptions for energy-efficient appliance purchases and residential wind-energy and solar-energy projects; spending $25 million a year to weatherize houses; and investing in clean-coal and natural gas projects. Each of those outlays would, by Deeds' logic, "divert" money from public education.

Either Deeds doesn't mean what he says about McDonnell diverting money from schools, or his campaign is incoherent. Either could be true -- but the latter would explain a whole lot.