Kaine: Able?

So, Gov. Tim Kaine got to give the opposition response to Tuesday nite's Big Speech and Cindy Sheehan round-up. What'd ya think?

Me? While that hypnotic left eyebrow had Red Staters leaning forward in their La-z-Boys® -- "Hey, Marge, come n lookit this guy!" -- Kaine calmly rattled off competence and the results to prove it. He's not a pretty boy, he wasn't trying too hard, he wasn't scary.

That last one--scary--matters most, because the fine, patriotic and God-fearin' residents of Hooterville don't really think we're pansies: they've been conditioned to be scared of us. They're scared of the future, no matter who's in charge. The future means change, uncertainty, and only more of it and faster. Democrats don't mind the future--we love it--because it's the only direction in which things can possibly look brighter, and get better, more even. We're comfy with uncertainty and with thinking the benefits of change outweigh its discomforts.

And, Red-staters, in their hearts, deep down agree. The only problem is, like most people, they don't change because someone's in their face, veins-a-poppin', glowering them into the thing "for their own good." They, like all of us, have their comfort level, their "spoon full of sugar" preferred method and mythology to make the medicine go down.

We saw a man with that method tonite, not the only one, for sure. Not pretty, a roving eyebrow, but sensible. It wasn't perfect. He was slower in places than his normal delivery. But that is the point. In an age of polish, commercial hype and falsified earnings reports, we shouldn't wonder the "counter-intuitive" appeal of a hick from Crawford by way of Andover. Bush is a fake everyman. But Kaine really is just a good guy. A councilman who married up. A guy who just gave a stand-up talk in one of the crappiest time-slots TV has to offer. He was the proof point to the gnawing anxiety a lot of red-staters have been carting around in their heads since November 3, compounded by a Category 5 hurricane the following summer: I f*cked up.