The Washington Post’s endorsement of Creigh Deeds is one of the least surprising newspaper endorsements of all time, and yet, it demonstrates a certain audaciousness on the part of that paper’s editors.
The Post endorses Democrats in almost every statewide and national race; the rare exceptions tend to come in races where it will make no significant difference. (The editors endorsed Republican Maryland governor Robert Ehrlich’s reelection bid in 2006, a year in which he looked pretty doomed from the start.) They repeatedly endorsed Rep. Jim Moran despite his embarrassing behavior.
If the paper’s endorsement editorials began, “We are, by and large, liberals, and thus are inclined to prefer the more liberal option in almost every election,” it would be at least be honest, and a great deal that follows could be excused for ideological consistency. But instead, they expect us to believe that Bob McDonnell really had a legitimate shot at being their preferred candidate, and botched it by pursuing the wrong policy ideas.
Back in May, the Post went out on a limb and endorsed Deeds in the Democratic primary, declaring, “Unlike his opponents, Mr. Deeds has made clear that he would make transportation his first priority, vowing to tackle this region's greatest challenge while his political capital is at its height.” From their tone, they clearly expected him to eventually lay out a plan on this issue; one can only imagine their mortification as Deeds refused to lay out a plan, month by month. Then after McDonnell started scoring points on that issue, Deeds returned to the Post’s editorial page to declare his plan: “The day after I'm elected, I will begin assembling a bipartisan commission to craft a comprehensive transportation package.” In other words, voters would learn the details of the plan only after Deeds was safely elected.
The Post’s endorsement begins with and focuses heavily on transportation; they salute Deeds for his willingness to raise taxes, even though Deeds rarely comes out and says so clearly, hiding his stance in his usual impenetrable rhetorical soup. (It is a parody to say, as the Post does, that Deeds has been “blunt” in his willingness to raise taxes.) Even if Deeds won’t come out and tell voters that he wants to raise taxes — and even if he’s running ads pledging to cut taxes — the editors take it on faith that he’ll do what they, and not what clear majorities of voters, want. If the editors want higher taxes, they ought to go a step further and give their readers a sense of which ones and how much higher — gas taxes? Income taxes? Car taxes? Just how much should the state government wring out of the paper’s Virginia readers?
Virginians pay 17.5 cents per gallon to pay for roads, and Northern Virginians pay an additional surtax for public transportation, but the Post audaciously claims, “The state has raised no significant new cash for roads, rails and bridges in 23 years.” Really? Then where is all that gas-tax revenue going? What matters to the editors is not that tax revenue goes up (more gas purchased means more in tax revenue for the state) but tax rates.
In their endorsement of Obama, the Post mentioned the candidate's eloquence; now it emphasizes the importance of not being persuaded by a well-turned phrase:
Mr. Deeds, lagging in the polls, lacks Mr. McDonnell's knack for crisp articulation. But if he has not always been the most adroit advocate for astute policies, that is preferable to Mr. McDonnell's silver-tongued embrace of ideas that would mire Virginia in a traffic-clogged, backward-looking past. Virginians should not confuse Mr. McDonnell's adept oratory for wisdom, nor Mr. Deeds's plain speech for indirection.
