As published for The Washington Post on October 9, 2009:

Creigh Deeds, the Democrat running for governor of Virginia, may not be much of a candidate, but he has a future as a political commentator. During a recentinterview, Deeds explained his trouble gaining political traction: “Frankly, a lot of what’s going on in Washington has made it very tough. We had a very tough August because people were just uncomfortable with the spending; they were uncomfortable with a lot of what was going on, a lot of the noise that was coming out of Washington, D.C.”

Some of this is blame-shifting. Deeds has made plenty of mistakes that can’t be attributed to the national political environment, including a tendency to make policy proposals that would leave blank space on a note card. But Deeds is correct to complain that “what’s going on in Washington” (translation: the ambitious liberalism of national Democrats) and “the spending” (translation: President Obama’s stimulus package and other expensive plans) and “the noise” (translation: debates on the role of government that Obama has provoked) have undermined the candidate’s appeal in a center-right state. In recent polling, Congress has an approval rating of 21 percent — 10 points lower than the approval rating of Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina. Deeds is running while carrying the burden of a Democratic Congress — and the increasingly heavy burden of Obama.

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