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Tim Kaine Could Be the Second Coming of Joe Biden - POLITICO Magazine

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/2016-tim-kaine-joe-biden-vp-running-mate-214108

Tim Kaine Could Be the Second Coming of Joe Biden

It hasn’t been uncommon to hear loyal Democrats—and even
independents—wistfully mutter that they wish Joe Biden could just stay on
as vice president. He’s a Democrat who speaks easily to some of the issues
that galvanize Republicans. As his second term winds to a close, America’s
“Uncle Joe” is enjoying a favorability rating of +15 in the
RealClearPolitics average. In today’s ultrapartisan, anti-politician
environment, that’s practically sainthood.

It was a foregone conclusion that Biden wouldn’t be back. But in choosing
Virginia Senator Tim Kaine as her running mate, Hillary Clinton has come
much closer than most people appreciate to offering America a third Joe
Biden term.

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Some big differences stand out. Biden was eight years older when he was
tapped as Barack Obama’s running mate; he’s a rust-belt Scranton guy who
lived most of his life in the Philadelphia-Wilmington region, while Kaine
spent formative years in the Midwest before landing in the South. Perhaps
most glaringly, by the time he became veep, Biden was already a national
figure with two presidential campaigns under his belt. Kaine was, as he
joked at his introduction, unknown to the national electorate—and, before
this week, to much of the political media.

But on closer inspection, Kaine ticks off some of the same boxes as Biden.
A senator from an inland Eastern seaboard city who is well-liked across the
aisle? Check. A Roman Catholic whose personal abortion beliefs let him
connect with people more conservative than the Democratic platform? Check.
A boring white male and veteran Democratic Party team player campaigning
for the lightning-rod historic top of the ticket? Check.

Deep parallels that suggest that Kaine could be as successful in a Clinton
administration as Biden has been for Obama.

The comparison shouldn’t be stretched too far, certainly—and there’s one
crucial difference in their appeal that matters deeply to the campaign this
year. As Kaine prepares to hold the floor at the Democratic National
Convention tonight, and introduces himself to his largest audience yet,
he’ll face the challenge of matching Biden’s superpower: an instinctive
ability to connect and empathize with the blue-collar anxiety that’s
pulling Democrats toward the other party this year. Can Kaine go the full
Biden? Only time will tell, but it’s worth considering the deep parallels
that suggest Kaine could be as successful in a Clinton administration as
Biden has been for Obama.

*He’s Been a Jesuit from the Jump*

The most obvious similarity between the two is their Catholic upbringing,
and the mix of conservative personal morality and liberal social policy
that stems from it.

Both come out of the Jesuit tradition, with its strong teachings on peace
and justice. Both came to politics through careers in the law, helping the
downtrodden: Biden as a public defender, Kaine representing victims of
housing discrimination. And neither is shy about discussing how their
Catholicism affects their political lives—as Kaine did in his debut speech
as Clinton’s running mate Saturday in Miami. Listeners heard Kaine speak
the Spanish he learned as a missionary in Honduras, during a year off from
Harvard Law School. And they also heard him speak of learning the motto
“men for others” in his Kansas City Jesuit high school. “It became like my
North Star,” he said. “I knew I wanted to do something to devote myself to
social justice.”

As with Biden, Kaine’s Catholic faith is not just a relic of his political
biography; it’s also demonstrably part of his life. He attends St.
Elizabeth Catholic Church on Richmond’s Northside, a predominantly black
congregation that stresses “unity and diversity,” where he started a men’s
study group; it’s the same church where he got married 30 years ago.

And Kaine has had to navigate a fine line between his personal Catholic
beliefs and the shibboleths of Democratic policy, especially on abortion
and the death penalty. Which is something Biden knows a little about,
having navigated the changing political demands of a purple state—and the
changing demands of the party over the course of time.

Kaine, like Biden, has had to navigate a fine line between his personal
Catholic beliefs and the shibboleths of Democratic policy.

Biden—like many Catholic Democrats—was pro-life early in his political
career. (Like Kaine, he went to Catholic school, and he even briefly
considered seminary and priesthood.) But he switched his position after the
1973 *Roe v. Wade* decision. He has called abortion issues his “biggest
dilemma” in matching his religious and political responsibilities. When
Biden was picked as VP, he held a mere 36 percent NARAL rating.

Now, going into the Democratic convention this week, Kaine’s biggest
challenges revolve around his ability to convince the Bernie Sanders wing
of the Democratic Party that he’s progressive enough to champion their
ideas in the White House. At times, as on the issue of abortion, Kaine
explicitly travels the familiar political road of drawing a line between
what he believes and what the government should impose on others. That’s a
blueprint straight out of Bidenville: As Joe wrote in his 2007 presidential
campaign book, *Promises To Keep*: “I am personally opposed to abortion,
but I don’t think I have a right to impose my view on the rest of society.”

The jury’s still out on whether that strategy will work for Kaine. Trump
surrogates have been on the air armed with talking points that call out
Kaine’s 100-percent rating with Planned Parenthood. Progressives, however,
aren’t ready to seal the deal just yet*. *“I’m conservative on issues of
personal responsibility,” Kaine said in radio ads during his run for
governor of Virginia in 2005, dug up last week by BuzzFeed. “As a former
Christian missionary, faith is central to my life. I oppose gay marriage,
support restrictions on abortion, no public funding and parental consent,
and I worked to pass a state law to ban partial birth abortions.”

In fact, Kaine has explicitly skirted his own Catholic-driven moral compass
in ways that have frustrated partisans on both sides of the aisle.
Sometimes his positions appear to be the result of his own internal
conflicts with church doctrine. At other times, Kaine’s stances can seem
politically calculating: He has, after all, run for statewide office in the
very purple state of Virginia. When running for governor, Kaine seemed to
pander to gun rights voters. BuzzFeed found evidence of that 2005-era Kaine
promising “not to propose any new gun laws” and favoring full interstate
concealed-carry reciprocity. He later voted against reciprocity as a
senator, and these days touts himself as a stalwart gun control advocate
willing to take on the NRA in his pro-gun state. He opposes the death
penalty on moral grounds, but considered it his duty to allow 11 executions
as governor. A decade ago, he opposed not only same-sex marriage but also
adoption for same-sex couples—but now supports both.

The key, in Biden’s case as well as in Kaine’s, may very well come down to
whether voters find them authentic—and luckily, that’s another place where
Kaine and Biden match. When talking about issues of justice, economics or
health care, “they both see the person behind the policy,” because of their
Jesuit backgrounds, says Scott Ferson, president of Liberty Square Group,
and one-time press secretary to another Catholic senator, the late Ted
Kennedy.

*They Both Claimed To Be Boring (But They’re Not)*

“Joe Biden, when he was picked, wasn’t an exciting pick and wasn’t seen as
an exciting guy,” says Ferson. “It was seen as safe and solid.” The
exciting choices for Barack Obama’s running mate included Kansas Governor
Kathleen Sebelius and Hispanic New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.
Internally, Obama was all about boring, safe and solid. When he got down to
his final three options, campaign manager David Plouffe wrote in *The
Audacity To Win*, two of them were Biden and Kaine. (Evan Bayh, the
moderate Indiana senator, was also in the mix.)

Biden, of course, ended up being not quite so boring as Obama might have
hoped. Under the glare of running-mate scrutiny, Biden developed a
reputation for gaffes and off-the-cuff irreverence. Over time, instead of
wrecking the ticket, it was spun as folksy irreverence: Thanks in part to
the burgeoning culture of Internet memes, he became known for back rubs,
lap-sitting, ice cream eating, and inimitable facial expressions.

In 2008, Biden was described as the boring, safe and solid choice. In 2016,
so is Kaine.

Eight years later, Kaine is being described as the boring, safe and solid
choice. But Kaine will, like Biden, get the advantage of beating low
expectations on the excitement scale. Many who have known Kaine say that
his reputation as dull is wildly overstated. “He’s really genial and
extroverted,” Feld says. “He genuinely likes people and likes to have fun.”
There’s already YouTube video of Kaine playing a Beatles song on harmonica,
and he counts the Replacements’ *Let It Be* as one of his favorite albums.
On the campaign trail, Kaine can bring a Bidenesque empathy to illuminate
the smart-but-dull policy prescriptions of his boss—as he showed Saturday
when discussing the Virginia Tech shooting tragedy he responded to as
governor.

That winning personality started to come through quickly, in a Miami
rollout that showcased Kaine at his most effortlessly conversational and
relatable. With expectations set so low that any sign of a pulse would have
surprised, Kaine riffed entertainingly about his life’s fortuitous path. He
described his wife in law school meeting “kind of a nerdy guy who had been
out teaching kids in Honduras.” He spoke of “battling banks, landlords,
insurance companies and even local government” on behalf of those facing
housing discrimination. He switched in and out of Spanish, to the delight
of the diverse Miami audience. He drew laughs with his gibes at Trump, and
his praise of Clinton had her beaming, clapping and laughing at more
apparent ease than almost any previous time on the trail.

*They Both Have Attracted Boo-birds from Party Progressives*

It’s easy to forget that back in 2008, the selection of Joe Biden was not
universally cheered within the Democratic Party.

Supporters of Hillary Clinton, still wounded by her narrow loss in the
nomination contest, strongly advocated that Obama offer her the other spot
on the ticket—far more persistently, by comparison, than Bernie Sanders’
fans pushed for him to be Clinton’s running mate this year.

In 2016, Sanders die-hards have instead demanded a Bernie surrogate—if not
Bernie himself, then a populist progressive in his image. Eight years ago,
Clintonites hoped Obama would at least choose a woman to crack the
second-highest glass ceiling. In fact, John McCain’s ill-fated selection of
Sarah Palin initially seemed calculated to capitalize on Obama’s failure to
include Clinton on the ticket—a tactic designed as much to steal more
disgruntled Clinton voters as to shore up McCain’s conservative appeal. In
that respect, the 2008 matchup mirrors the current fear that Sanders voters
will defect to Trump.

The progressive wing then was at least as skeptical of Biden as it now is
of Kaine. In addition to his abysmal rating on abortion, Biden had a
less-than-liberal record on gay rights and criminal justice reform. More
importantly, Biden had been a staunch supporter of the Iraq War. He’d
supported the authorization vote, and—unlike Clinton—had also supported the
actual invasion.

Kaine is currently under fire from the left on trade and banking. But there
were plenty of other disappointments for Virginia progressives during
Kaine’s term as governor. He supported construction of a new coal-fired
power plant by the state’s dominant power company, Dominion, which also was
behind a utility deregulation bill Kaine signed into law. He signed a
repeal of Virginia’s estate tax—previously vetoed by moderate Democrat Mark
Warner—that took money from state services and returned it to fewer than
1,000 of the state’s wealthiest citizens.

Kaine is a liberal, but he is not an ideologue.”

Kaine also refused to do what his successor, Terry McAuliffe, tried to do
this year: Restore voting rights to felons after they complete their full
sentences. Kaine hedged by saying that he didn’t believe he had the
authority to provide such a blanket order—an opinion Virginia’s top court
cited in striking down McAuliffe’s move this month. (McAuliffe, undeterred,
has vowed to individually grant voting restoration to all 200,000 felons
affected, which only further exposed Kaine’s reluctance on what has become
a major issue among progressives.)

And that’s just the beginning. Lowell Feld, founder of the Blue Virginia
blog, has compiled a list of Kaine’s “Top 20 Failures” as governor—but he
remains a strong supporter.* “*Kaine is a liberal, but he is not an
ideologue,” Feld says. “He likes to get things done.”

Obama, of course, didn’t need to shore up the base. Clinton does. Despite
that, she’s chosen a running mate who, like Biden, has the superpower of
knowing how to win votes in a deeply divided state. Though Virginia is
edging toward a reliable win for Democrats in statewide elections, it
remains in Republican control at the state legislature level and in eight
of 11 congressional districts. Kaine’s moderation has worked not only in
the service of getting elected in a tough state, but also to work with the
state’s Republican leaders. That’s a cross-aisle skill he carried into the
Republican-controlled U.S. Senate when he arrived in 2013—and one that
Clinton clearly hopes he’d bring to the White House.

*They Were Both Scooped from the Senate*

It’s no coincidence that the past six Democratic VP nominees have been U.S.
senators: Lloyd Bentsen, Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, John Edwards, Biden and
now Kaine. The president can control the White House; he—or she—needs help
with the lawmakers on the other side of the mall. “President Obama picked
Biden in part because of his strong and deep relationships in the
Senate—even though [Obama himself] was in the Senate,” says Jim Manley,
director at QGA Public Affairs, who worked in the Senate for 20 years, for
George Mitchell, Ted Kennedy and Harry Reid.

Biden’s personality, relationships, trustworthiness and lack of ideological
rigidity made him a perfect good cop to Obama’s bad cop, so to speak. That
kept a lot of deals alive long past the point when the folks in the
Capitol—on both sides of the aisle—grew frustrated with the president’s
attitude.

Clinton also served as a senator, of course. But, Manley points out, there
has been a huge turnover in Congress since she was last there in 2008.
“Kaine’s relationships are fresher than hers are,” Manley says.

Indeed, the announcement of Kaine’s selection as Clinton’s running mate met
with more praise than criticism from his Republican colleagues—which was
reminiscent of GOP response to Joe Biden’s selection in 2008. Back then,
Republican senators including Chuck Hagel, Dick Lugar and Arlen Specter
spoke up on Biden’s behalf; now, Pat Toomey, John McCain, Bob Corker and
Jeff Flake have done so for Kaine. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina even
praised Kaine as “sort of Biden-lite” to Politico.

Senator Lindsey Graham praised Kaine as “sort of Biden-lite.”

Those relationships, and pragmatic approach, are clearly not lost on the
person who chose him. Clinton, introducing Kaine on Saturday, twice
referred to him as “a progressive who likes to get things done.” It’s much
how she sees herself as well—and how she sees Obama, for that matter, which
might very well explain why they picked similar working partners.

After all, the vice president’s own agenda is largely irrelevant. The job
is to help implement the president’s priorities. Presidents themselves—even
those who once had good relationships on the Hill, as Obama and Clinton did
as senators—become too politically toxic along partisan lines by the end of
the election to make those connections in person. Vice presidents aren’t
immune to that effect (see: Cheney, Dick). Biden showed that a vice
president can weather it. Kaine is a good bet to follow that example.

Ultimately, that’s why Kaine will likely prove to be a smart choice for
Clinton. For all the talk of swing-state Virginia, and Kaine’s fluent
*español*, he probably won’t matter much in the November election. Nor will
his apostasies to liberals—or moderates—make much of a difference down the
line. What will matter is how effective he is at pushing her agenda once in
office. And all signs are that, in that respect, Kaine will be positively
Bidenesque.

That’s only if the ticket wins, of course—which is where one key difference
with Biden matters.

As a campaigner, Biden has a blue-collar, coal-country appeal that could
matter a lot in a year when aggressively plainspoken populism seems to be
driving American politics. The side of Joe Biden constantly parodied in *The
Onion—*the Uncle Joe cracking open tallboys, washing his Trans Am in the
White House driveway—is exactly the candidate the Democrats are missing
this year.

Kaine is affable enough, but doesn’t have Biden’s touch of natural gift of
gab—the instinctive desire to both elicit and tell stories with everybody
as if they are old friends. And Kaine doesn’t have the personal history of
loss that has beset Biden, and helped him to connect to people who find
themselves on the wrong end of circumstance. Biden suffered the death of
his first wife and their daughter in a 1972 automobile accident, and of his
son Beau from brain cancer this year. His struggles with those losses have
very clearly defined and shaped him—and, like the president he served,
allowed him to merge his personal story with a national narrative that’s
especially poignant in times of trauma and loss. It’s made him relatable in
a way that escapes Kaine’s seemingly golden-touch life.

Biden’s job, in 2008 and since, has been serving as a bridge between the
public and an often aloof, unrelatable Obama. Hillary Clinton has a warmer
side than Obama does, but still needs some of that kind of help on the
ticket—and tonight we’ll find out whether Kaine is Biden enough to do the
same for her.

*David S. Bernstein is a contributing political analyst at WGBH News in
Boston.*
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Eric D. Schwerin
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com

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