McDonnell's Thesis: Much Ado About Nothing

All summer long, Republican Bob McDonnell has been urging Creigh Deeds, his Democratic opponent in the governor’s race, to join him in a series of 10 debates across Virginia.

Let’s debate the serious issues Virginia faces in the 21st century, McDonnell, the state’s former attorney general, said.

Deeds’ answer? Here’s a 20-year-old, law-school thesis. Debate that.

How truly pathetic.

The Washington Post broke the “story” of McDonnell’s law school paper last week. Written while he was a law student at Regent University in 1989, he detailed his views on divorce, single-parent households, homosexuality, abortion and women’s rights.

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And McDonnell’s opinions? Divorce and single-parent households are detrimental for children. Abortion? He’s against it. Additional legal protections for gays, lesbians and women? The Constitution protects all citizens equally, he replies.

So what’s the big deal, you ask. Well, the Deeds campaign is faltering, and faltering badly going into the final two months of the campaign, and needs a hot-button wedge issue to gin up the liberal Democratic base.

It’s that simple and that pathetic.

Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus says the student paper is McDonnell’s “macacca” moment, referring to former U.S. Sen. George Allen’s racial slur that sank his 2006 re-election campaign. The editorial pages of the Post and the liberal editorial pages of other papers around the state have opined that the 20-year-old thesis raises doubts about McDonnell’s fitness for office. Deeds himself told the Post the revelations in the thesis will change the dynamics of the race.

What bunk.

The commonwealth faces extreme challenges, now and in the near future: economic development, transportation, education. And this is the best Creigh Deeds can contribute to the debate?

In past elections, it used to be conservative Republicans who would pull out “The Three Gs” — God, guns and gays — to gin up their base. It’s awfully ironic that it’s now the Democrats doing the same thing in the governor’s race.

McDonnell is a theologically conservative Catholic. What does that have to do with who is better suited to lead Virginia in 2009? Nothing.

In the days since the story of the student paper broke, McDonnell has said he’s modified some of the views expressed, especially those about the role of women in family structure and in society in general. Indeed, many of his top campaign officials and advisers over the years have been women.

Well, good ... we’ll take him at his word and move on.

But many Democratic partisans would deny McDonnell the ability to grow over the years and change his views.

Just for the sake of discussion, though, let’s bring up the example of the late Robert Kennedy. As attorney general during the administration of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy signed off on FBI surveillance of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., even approving bugging his bedroom in search of evidence of marital infidelities. All in all, he was ambivalent, to say the least, about the burgeoning civil rights struggle in America.

All that changed with JFK’s assassination in November 1963. From that moment on until his own assassination while seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968, Bobby Kennedy was a ferocious soldier in the battle for civil rights.

If a Democratic icon like RFK can modify and change his views, so too can a Republican candidate for Virginia governor like McDonnell.

So, to Sen. Deeds, we say “Drop this silly line of attack. Bring the campaign back to current issues that matter deeply to Virginians in 2009: jobs, the economy, transportation, education. Not a 20-year-old student paper.”

Perhaps, the good senator will even consider McDonnell’s 10-debate offer. We won’t hold our breath, though ... on any of it.