Merli Column: Obama, McDonnell meet reality

As both the new governor of Virginia and the president of the United States perhaps know better now than before taking office -- now comes the hard part.

For President Obama, all those wish-list promises from his dramatically successful campaign have given way in his first year in office to the realities of trying to manage the most unmanageable of all human species -- the Congress -- coupled with a troublesome lack of leadership from his administration that has liberals on one end of the spectrum and conservatives on the other end scratching their puzzled heads (although with opposite expressions on their face).

For Gov. Bob McDonnell, initial attempts to deal with the commonwealth's biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression is coming piecemeal, and as low-key as possible. This week his inconsequential budget-cut recommendations came via press release designed for minimum impact -- in contrast to being delivered in-person by the governor himself in comments that can be captured and flashed over TV, radio and Web sites for maximum exposure.

Even a general, theoretical consideration at some point of having to raise one state tax or another to help make up the state's deep shortfall (predecessor Tim Kaine wanted a slight bump in the income tax) for any card-carrying Republican, of course, is tantamount to being a no-good, dirty rotten communist -- or even worse, one of those fancy tax-and-spend liberals.

So skillfully averting his eyes from one elephant in the room after another, McDonnell is proposing the trite-and-true keys that most politicians call upon when they're caught between their own campaign rhetoric and reality: freeze state job openings, reduce state retirement contributions, shift some funding from over here to over there, and once again, subtly note that while all these tiny proposals combined will do nearly nothing to fight the state's budget shortfall -- "We won't be raising taxes."

Everyone in Richmond knows that $1 million here and maybe $4 million there in potential savings are totally meaningless because of the enormity of the fiscal situation before us. Namely, the commonwealth is confronting a shortfall over the next two years of nothing less than (B-as-in-boy) $4.2 billion. As one member of the state Senate Finance Committee, R. Edward Houck (D-Spotsylvania), told reporters this week, while he has no problems with the tiny cuts being pushed right now by the governor, "…The real issue is where are the $2 billion in cuts? We need the governor to give us guidance…"

Even at least one fellow GOP lawmaker, Del. S. Chris Jones (R-Suffolk), said in Richmond, "This is the beginning, but we have a very long way to go." Indeed, when the governor chooses to whittle away at a multi-billion dollar deficit a miniscule million bucks at a time, it signals a certain lack of seriousness and means that "very long way to go" will be even longer.

Obama, too, in his campaign promise to the middle class to raise no new taxes to help tackle the nation's massive deficit, finds himself being backed into corners of his own doing -- compounded in the long run by current piecemeal solutions that are big on perception yet small on substance. One new proposal outlined last night in his State of the Union Address (as of this column's earlier deadline) to freeze federal spending for three years is a lot less than meets the eye, considering all the major entitlement programs (Social Security, Medicare, etc.) and other mammoth fixed-budget untouchables that a freeze would not affect.

I suspect what the president has already discovered -- and that Bob McDonnell soon will -- is when the dust settles from all the aspiring rhetoric, savvy political strategies and new media communication tools, in the long run it will only be tangible results that we constituents will duly note and reward.

For Obama, tangible results will mean jobs, as well as bringing feasible ends to both wars overseas that George Bush somehow thought could be conducted without any tax hikes. For McDonnell, it will mean effectively slashing the commonwealth's $4.2 billion shortfall without too adversely affecting state education, transportation and other vital state service needs, even if it means breaking a few campaign promises on taxes along the way.

John Merli has been a Prince William County resident since 1984, and a Potomac News columnist since 1985. He has worked in the media for more than 30 years. E-mail him at: j.merli@comcast.net