Today, John Behan (now that he’s thoroughly outed himself in the Washington Post, I don’t know if we’re supposed to keep calling him “John,” or what) posted a story about Tim Kaine at the Salem Fair on Saturday. Somebody told John that the Democratic candidate for governor showed up an hour late to find the fair completely blanketed in Kilgore signs, without a single Kaine sign to be scene. Writes John:
But when he saw that there were no Kaine signs anywhere, he proceeded to lay into his staff at the fair so loudly and viciously — I’m told he was cursing — that even bystanders could hear it (a couple of whom contacted me, saying that people were startled by it).
Sounds like a public meltdown, and a bad time for the Kaine campaign. It really does seem like that campaign has been in a slow burn for a while. The ship is sinking.
Assuming that John’s source and the story are accurate, I come to precisely the opposite conclusion. I’ve certainly heard, anecdotally, that the Kaine campaign is laced with my conceptual nemeses: resume-padding campaign monkeys. If Tim Kaine realized on that hot Saturday afternoon that he’s got some resume-padding campaign monkeys working on his campaign — and I certainly know of a few — and decided to lay into ’em good, I say God bless him.
That’s not a sign of a “meltdown,” or a sinking ship. It’s the sign of a captain who is in charge of his vessel, and is tossing the stowaways overboard.
Full steam ahead.