I have been much dissatisfied with the coverage that the Mainstream Media has given the transportation debate. Reporters and editorial writers alike have employed a primitive analytical framework for understanding the issues. By and large, the MSM has depicted the debate as taking place between “Democrats” and “moderate” Republicans on the one hand and “hard core”, “anti-tax”, “obstructionist” Republicans on the other.
As I write in my latest column, “Transportation Abomination” (stealing the headline from a previous blog entry), this schema is largely useless, if not outright misleading. It is absurd to call Sen. John Chichester, R-Northumberland, a “moderate” when he has advocated tax increases that even Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and former Gov. Mark R. Warner, both Democrats, were unwilling to embrace.
A more useful continuum, I suggest, is between the Big Government party and the Small Government party. The Big Government party consists mainly of Democrats, while the Small Government party consists mainly of Republicans, but there are plenty of exceptions in both camps. Insofar as Sen. Chichester and Sen. Russell Potts, R-Winchester, and others consistently support an expansion in the size, scope and funding of state government, they have far more in common with Democrats of like mind than most Republicans. These gentlemen may have sentimental ties to the GOP, but it is their commitment to Big Government that defines them, not their commitment to the Republican Party.
But that’s only part of the story. When it comes to transportation, there’s another continuum that cuts across party lines: a spectrum that runs from Business As Usual (the vested interests who buttress the status quo) to the Reformers (those who insist that institutional change must be part of any comprehensive transportation solution).
Along this continuum, Sen. Chichester has plenty of company among legislators who like things just the way they are: There’s nothing wrong with the transportation that more money won’t fix. Moving towards the middle is Gov. Kaine, who acknowledges that we can’t “build our way out of congestion,” but isn’t willing to spend much political capital in achieving institutional reform. Moving further along the spectrum is House Speaker William J. Howell, who has proposed restructuring the way the state and local governments build and maintain roads, and took considerable political risks to push his vision. At the far end of the continuum are the Smart Growth movement, free marketeers and others who, to varying degrees, call for a total overhaul Virginia’s zoning codes, land use policies and governance structures.
There is almost no overlap whatsoever between the Reform/Business As Usual polarity and the Democratic/Republican polarity. Indeed, members of both parties include both zealous defenders of, and critics of, the status quo.
In my column, I interpret the transportation debate as an interplay between Democrats and Republicans seeking partisan political advantage, between advocates of Big Government and Small Government in a battle over the size and scope of state government, and between various constituencies either defending or attacking the status quo.
Frankly, I did not have the time to carry through this line of thought as thoroughly as I would have liked. But it considerably more helpful, in my humble opinion, in understanding how Virginia has gotten to where it is — with a handful of General Assembly conferees trying to cobble together a legislative package before the session expires — than you’ll read anywhere in the MSM.