VFV video debate.

I’ve watched all of the video clips provided by the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the three candidates for governor, and I found the whole thing a bit of a bummer.

For starters, each of the three candidates’ videos are distinctly home-movie. There are banging and creaking noises in the background, shaky camerawork, and echo-y audio. The opening clip of Kilgore is shot at a crazy angle that serves only to accentuate his weird habit of talking out of the side of his mouth. Kaine is shot from such an angle that it makes him look like he’s got a fat face. Potts is filmed in the parking lot of what seems to be a motel, and I get the sense that he’s threatening me.

This was the first time that I’d seen Russ Potts in action. I’ve heard him on the radio and been impressed by his candor. He’s clearly a smart guy. But he looks like a fruitcake in these interviews. Twice, he refers to himself in the third person, and his droopy mouth and tooth-whistling makes me wonder if he’s had a stroke. His responses to the questions are as thick with platitudes as a Bush speech, and I just don’t feel convinced of the legitimacy of his answers. And describing the governor’s race as a “magical journey” is just weird.

Kaine, as I’d said, is not presented well. He’s backlit, there’s a sheen on the side of his face, and the sound is lousy. But he’s positive, straightforward, and is clearly speaking off the cuff, and doing so well. He doesn’t spend a lot of time using existing schticks as a crutch. I interpret his casual style as legitimacy, which is just part of why I like the guy so much.

Kilgore. That’s a bad scene. To be frank, his video just creeps me out. His opening statement is filmed at a 20° angle, though he’s damned near sitting up straight. Maybe he always sits at a strong angle? I don’t know, but it’s making me dizzy.

Listening to him, I had to laugh at the memory of Gordon Morse writing in the Washington Post that Kilgore is basically “a Tennessee version of Mr. Rogers.” He maintains a calm, even, soothing tone throughout his comments, but it’s the calm tone that is adopted by actors attempting to portray a barely-restrained psychopath, not one that is found in reality. I get a strong sense that he’s playing the role of Jerry Kilgore the Candidate — I can’t believe that he actually talks like this.

More than anything else, though, Kilgore makes me uncomfortable in this video. He’s the Tarzan of the race, swinging wildly from memorized line to memorized line. Sometimes they’re sequential, but sometimes they’re completely incongruous. At other times, he can’t think of something to say, and so, in mid-sentence, he pauses, smiles, and shakes his head gently. On a few occasions, he makes the sort of little blunder that we all make while speaking, but while I witness him awkwardly picking his way through the minefield of the English language, I cringe at the familiar experience. I can just see the wheels turning, the slow realization of “oh, shit, did I really just say that?” as he witnesses what’s coming out of his mouth. Helping nothing, I’m stultifyingly empathetic, particularly with others’ discomfort — Woody Allen movies are out of the question, and when the local news stations screw up, I just turn off the TV. It’s too painful. I never did have to stop watching Kilgore’s clips, but I cringed a few times.

One final note. In one clip, Kilgore promises that his first act as governor will be to: “say to the agency heads and cabinet members that I appoint that they don’t come to work for me as your governor, they come to work every day for you, the taxpayers.” I can only hope that he’s knowingly spouting platitudes here, and that he doesn’t actually believe this. Elected officials work for the citizens. But agency heads work for the governor. They work on behalf of citizens, they should work for the betterment of citizens. But they work for the governor. I understand that Mr. Kilgore has never run a business, and so he may not appreciate the difference between the two. We need accountability in government, and accountability doesn’t happen when non-elected officials are accountable to citizens who have no say over those officials’ employ. I want a governor who understands how a solid management structure works, as Governor Mark Warner does, not one who will run Virginia like some fluffy .com-era “the customers are your boss” hippie business. Maybe Kilgore doesn’t really believe what he’s saying, but I don’t know if that’s better, or worse.