Ad in Virginia Governor’s Race Brings up Hitler, Removes Reason

The race for the governor’s job in Virginia is a particularly ugly one. Democrat Tim Kaine, currently the lieutenant governor, opposes the death penalty because of his Catholic moral beliefs. Republican former attorney general Jerry Kilgore’s campaign is running an ad that says, “Tim Kaine says Adolf Hitler doesn't qualify for the death penalty. This was one of the worst mass murderers in modern times.” A classic example of a debate that is generating heat rather than light.

Mr. Kaine responded with an ad that said he would enforce the death penalty in Virginia “because it’s the law.” There are suggestions being made that Mr. Kaine is either lying about this, or he is insincere as a Catholic, which makes him a hypocrite. In America’s bizarre electoral system, lying and hypocrisy are the biggest of sins. But what of the death penalty itself?

There is an entire debate about whether the state is justified in killing people that could be going on in Virginia that is not. One of Mr. Kilgore’s ads relies on a Richmond Times-Dispatch column that claims Mr. Kaine “suggested he would not favor sending even Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin or Idi Amin to the gallows.” Now, the moral, ethical, political and legal issues here are incredibly big. They define what the polity believes, and they define, in part, what it is to be a Virginian. Instead, the whole discussion becomes one of “he wouldn’t kill Hitler, so he must be a jackass.”

However, the campaign as a whole is miserable, and it isn’t the fault of any long dead mass murderer. Both candidates have promised the voters the moon. More spending on schools, roads, rural health centers – a cornucopia of welfare state goodies. And neither has said how he would pay for it. There’s the usual bull about cutting waste and run the government like a business (Enron? Refco? WorldCom? Delta Airlines?). But never do they say they’ll raises taxes – which is the only way to really boost spending in any meaningful way.

So, the home of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington is also home to a debate about whether Hitler should have been executed (presumably after a fair trial – or would that make one soft of genocide?). As long as the debate is about emotion rather than thinking, Mr. Kaine could ask whether the Roman Empire should have killed Jesus Christ. It was, after all, the law. And it wouldn’t hurt an already pitiful campaign that neither man deserves to win. But then, this journal still believes (contrary to a huge amount of empirical evidence) that ideas in politics matter.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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