In which Jeff Schapiro accidentally elevates Bob McDonnell above Reagan

The RTD’s Jeff Schapiro uses his weekly video monologue to offer up a series of “gotchas” on Gov. McDonnell and the state’s finances. For those who have been paying attention, it’s old news that both McDonnell and the General Assembly used just about every trick in the “David Copperfield Guide to State Budgeting” to balance the books in 2010. My sources tell me that the shadings and shavings never really stopped.

But Jeff points to two items to say that there are no more gimmicks left, and the only thing left for McDonnell & Co. to do is to cut, cut, cut the budget. Yes, revenues, while up and ahead of projections, are showing signs of weakness. Just before those numbers were released, the Governor’s chief of staff, Martin Kent, circulated a letter to agency heads asking them to prepare for additional budgetary haircuts as “it has become increasingly apparent that the many critical needs of our state will have to be met with what may be increasingly limited resources.”

Jeff believes this is a sign that the Governor is finally leveling with Virginians about the possible dire fiscal future. While that doesn’t square, at all, with the Governor’s earlier public statements on the budget, the fact that state spending was rolled back to levels last seen during the dark, wilderness days of the Warner administration, or with the cautionary language that’s accompanied every one of the monthly revenue statements, I’ll cut Jeff some slack, just this once.

No, it’s not because I’ve gone soft, or run out of buckshot. It’s because in his attempt to take McDonnell down a peg, Jeff blunders into what could be an enduring positive for the man would would be veep.

McDonnell, Jeff intones, “may go down in history for something most politicians only talk about: shrinking the cost and size of government.”

If so, then McDonnell will have succeeded in doing the one thing that even Ronald Reagan could not achieve, either as California’s governor, or the nation’s president.

And his story turned out rather well, didn’t it?

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About the author

Norman Leahy

Norm Leahy has written about Virginia and national politics online since 2002, beginning with One Man's Trash (OMT), and continuing through Bacon's Rebellion (both the blog and the e-zine), Sic Semper Tyrannis, NBC12's Decision Virginia, Richmond.com and Tertium Quids. He is the chief blogger at "The Score" and a producer of "The Score" radio show as well as being a Washington Examiner contributor.