Campaign 2009: Begin with the roads

If this year's crop of statewide and legislative candidates is remarkable in any way, it is for their utter lack of ambition.

The 2009 campaign has drifted past Labor Day and is aimlessly bobbing along toward Election Day without well-articulated goals or a credible plan for solving Virginia's most pressing problem - the traffic congestion choking our urban and suburban communities.

Democrats and Republicans seem satisfied to mumble vague promises about restoring the economy and to posture over controversial bills pending before Congress. The next governor and General Assembly will have a peripheral role at best in those matters, but they serve as convenient and divisive distractions from the one responsibility that unquestionably falls to state leaders.

Do these candidates want to revive Virginia's economy? Then they should explain how they will resuscitate the state's highway construction budget, which has been gutted by $3.7 billion in cuts since the spring of 2008.

Do they want to make Virginia a safer place to raise a family? Improve maintenance of existing bridges and tunnels and provide a new escape route for residents of Hampton Roads fleeing a dangerous hurricane.

Do they want to create jobs? Build roads.

Transportation should be dominating the campaign debates this year, but on the few occasions that it has surfaced, the result has been unenlightening and thoroughly frustrating.

In the governor's race, Democrat Creigh Deeds drew shrieks of protest from GOP headquarters when he said he would sign a transportation package that included a tax increase, even though he added the caveat that the bill must have bipartisan support. Republican Bob McDonnell later said he would veto the bill under the same circumstances.

McDonnell has released a transportation plan of welcome specificity, which raises money through a combination of selling off state assets, diverting money from critical needs and responsibilities, and a heavy dose of overly hopeful financial projections.

Deeds' proposal is distinguished by its lack of specificity, either in what he proposes to build or how he proposes to pay for it.

That leaves voters with choices between unacceptable alternatives - between passivity and obfuscation from the Democratic ticket and obstructionism and fantasy from the Republican choice.

It's no wonder most voters don't even bother asking candidates for their positions on the issue anymore.

But residents of Hampton Roads can't give up.

Unlike Northern Virginia, this region still has the time and the means to save itself. No amount of asphalt can erase the decades of poor planning and population growth that are strangling D.C.'s suburbs.

In Hampton Roads, politics and absolutist ideology are the obstacles to success. They can be overcome, but it will take a leader with courage, a commitment to Virginia's future and a healthy dose of ambition.