Is debating the past helpful to Senate candidates?

By Jay Warren
WSLS10 Anchor
Published: July 21, 2008

Watch the entire debate

The VBA debate at the Homestead Saturday was the first face to face debate ever between former Governors Warner and Gilmore and it was their first chance set the record straight.

Both men welcomed it.

“At the end of each of our terms in office, which governor actually left Virginia a better place,” Warner asked.

Gilmore began his closing remarks saying, “I’d take all day of comparison of our respective governorships.”

And they did. This stroll down memory lane included some bragging.

“We earned the designation as the best managed state in the country,” Warner said.

And it included a lot of attacks. Warner on Gilmore’s budgeting: “Jim Gilmore promised to end the car tax, but when it ended up costing three times more than he said he ended up using budget gimmicks, tried to hide the problem and helped drive Virginia into the fiscal ditch.”

Gilmore on Warner’s broken tax pledge: “Who can you trust? A person that sticks with it, delivers on the car tax cut and does what he said he was going to do, or a person who casually brushes aside those kinds of fundamental commitments to the people of Virginia and raises taxes anyway.”

WSLS Political Analyst Dr. Bob Denton calling the debate the “duel of the governorships.”

He says the exchanges were interesting because of the “very different view of reality and interpretations they have of each other’s governorships.”

But, is a conversation of the past, sometimes dating back to 1997, what the public really wants? Or, does it want a discussion about the serious problems our commonwealth and country face and how our two Senate candidates will fix those problems?

WARREN: “Are Virginians going to want to sit around and listen to these guys beat each other up on what they did in the past?”

DENTON: “I think that will start wearing on people very quickly.”

Instead, Dr. Denton says the candidates should move past their resumes and to the future.

“Americans like people who are optimistic. Americans vote for people who talk about the future, a bright future,” he said.

We didn’t get that at the first debate of the campaign, but there’s still plenty of time to change the conversation.