‘Old Virginny’ rears its head

On the occasion of Barack Obama’s historic ascension to the presidency, fueled in small part (as it turned out) by the turn of Virginia’s political hue from red to blue, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine took occasion to hoist a banner of racism already tossed to the trash heap. “ ‘Old Virginny is dead,’” the governor declared, issuing a verbal nod to the minstrel. A legacy’s demise, apparently, owes nothing to those who cast ballots in favor of Obama’s opponent. Amid shifts, the governor’s thumb remains firmly planted to hypocrisy’s pulse.

“Carry Me Back to Old Virginia,” offensive to blacks and others, was retired as the official state song in 1997. It was written more than a century earlier, in 1878 when the Civil War’s shadows still lingered, by James A. Bland, a black man and native of Queens, N.Y. His intent has been disputed. Bland writes in the voice of a slave, longing to meet his lost “Massa and Missis … on that bright and golden shore.” Did Bland mean this as satire or as the literal longings of a free black enduring post-war struggles in the North?

We do not pretend to know the answer. It is sufficient for us that the song is in retirement. Kaine’s intent is clearer and more banal. Obama’s election is indeed a shining symbol of how far America has traveled. Kaine was an integral player in the moment, serving as national co-chairman in the brilliantly run Obama campaign, leading to what the Associated Press paraphrased the governor as calling “the apex of everything he worked for since law school.”

But the “Old Virginny” to which Kaine refers died long ago. When precisely? We will not venture a guess, but a logical point would be sometime before Nov. 8, 1989, when Douglas Wilder became the first African American to be elected governor of any state. That would place the marker well before the rise of Obama, who won neither in spite of his race nor because of it.

Despite the historic implications of his candidacy, this fall’s campaign was what all should be, a contest of ideas. Utilizing this measure alone, we supported the Republican, Sen. John McCain, whose vision tilted closer to that of America’s founders, promoting more strongly than Obama individual liberty and free markets.

Obama’s victory in Virginia and his Electoral College landslide indicated striking contrasts in most senses superficial. Few candidates on the national stage have owned it in the dynamic fashion of Obama, a speaker whose skills are legend. But on the issues, the contrasts between the candidates were less vivid. At a critical moment in the campaign, when McCain might have drawn distinctions, he supported along with Obama the $700 billion federal bailout, a socialist plunge that most Americans disdained.

Kaine’s broad brush discounts not only meaningful objections to Obama’s policies but the real progress this state and America have steadily realized on the subject of race as well as the sheer force of the president-elect’s appeal as a candidate of unique abilities. Eras have risen and faded before the governor’s eyes, dimming his constituents’ vision of the racial divide, yet Kaine apparently has remained blind and still does not see.