Thirty-seven years ago, I walked into an orientation group at Harvard Law School and into a lifelong friendship with Tim Kaine. Tim and I became section mates, study partners, intramural teammates and roommates. We lived in a house with five Midwestern boys who liked to eat barbecue, grow corn, throw parties and play music. Since law school, we have attended each other’s weddings, started families in the same years, biked across Iowa and kayaked the Nantahala. I have attended his inaugurations as mayor, lieutenant governor, governor and senator.
Tim’s life story is now well reported in the press: the son of a home economics teacher and small businessman who ran an iron-working shop in Kansas City, Mo., the brilliant student who finished college in three years to save the cost of tuition, the compassionate Christian who took his welding and carpentry skills and started a vocational school in Honduras with Catholic missionaries, the civil rights lawyer who took on so many cases for so little pay that his partners reduced his compensation, the caring neighbor who ran for city council to help his working class neighborhood, the bipartisan bridge-builder who led Virginia out of its deepest recession to become the top-rated state in the nation for business while reforming early childhood education and increasing services for the poor.
Long after we left law school, I asked Tim how he developed his deep commitment to public service. This is what he told me in an email: “While I was at law school, I had an epiphany about the difference between opinion and conviction. I was surrounded by smart and opinionated people, with opinions that I often shared. But I also noticed large gaps between words and deeds. I made a conscious choice to try to live my values more than opining about them. Anne and I have tried to go about life a certain way — where we live, the work we do, where we go to church, where our kids go to school, what things we have or don’t have, what we worry about and what we let slide — and let that be our example more than things.” That’s Tim Kaine — working hard every day to live his Midwestern and Christian values.
Even Republicans struggle to discredit Kaine’s basic decency. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., tweeted shortly after Kaine’s announcement, “Trying to count the ways I hate (Tim Kaine). Drawing a blank. Congrats to a good man.”
Tim has lived in the same working-class neighborhood for 30 years. He has cut his own salary to free up money for services. He and Anne have sheltered a homeless family in their home over multiple years. And over the past 20 years, while Donald Trump has given $900,000 in political campaign contributions to “rig” the system for his real estate empire, Tim Kaine has been tithing to his church. When I hear a Trump operative claim that Tim is corrupt, I realize that Trump is confounded when faced with a truly honorable man.
Therein, perhaps, lies the brilliance of Clinton’s choice. Against the darkness of Trump’s vision of America and the cynicism of his monotonous attacks, Kaine’s optimism, decency and bipartisan bonhomie are a beacon for a troubled electorate.
Scott Brown lives in Hanover.