Not the legacy he had hoped for

When Gov. Timothy M. Kaine took his oath of office four years ago, this page predicted: "For good or ill, Kaine will be Virginia's next transportation governor. Either he will spearhead a fix... or he will preside over an increasingly congested network of roads."

He could not have imagined how little time he had to map his destiny. Less than a third of the way through his term, the economy began to gnaw away mercilessly at his legacy. Nor could he have conceived of the new and heavy titles history would lay on his shoulders.

Kaine will be remembered as Virginia's recession governor, a Democrat who promised to grow government and expand access to education and health care but one who instead dismantled state programs at an unprecedented pace.

Kaine also assumed the role of caretaker governor, offering words of comfort and personal faith following the tragedy in Blacksburg in 2007 that stole away too many of Virginia's promising sons and daughters.

Kaine should have been Virginia's transportation governor as well. The recession and partisan politics share in the blame, but Kaine's own missteps contributed to the stumbling parade of failures.

As a candidate, he gave only vague clues on how he would solve the state's transportation needs. The scores of town halls he held after his election could not plug the gap where a mandate should have been. He spread himself thin with transportation, education, health care and environmental goals, each of which would have been a four-year project in more prosperous times.

He was too combative with Republicans and too accommodating with recalcitrant Democrats. He favored surprise attacks over consensus building. He allowed himself to be sucked into Richmond's tired old blame game, wasting energy on finger-pointing and pointless legislative maneuvers. Though he had been a productive mayor of the state's capital city, he often seemed poorly equipped to lead state government and 7.7 million Virginians.

If Kaine lost sight of the transportation goal he set for himself, his focus was unwavering when confronted with a budget task he never wanted. The $30 billion, two-year general fund budget he completed last month is $4 billion lighter than the one he inherited in 2006.

Even as he cut millions from education and natural resources programs, Kaine pressed forward with a handful of vital investments, passing a bond package for college construction projects and pursuing an ambitious land conservation initiative. He ferried Virginia through the worst economic downturn since the 1930s while preserving the state's top-drawer credit rating and pro-business accolades.

Those accomplishments, however, are threatened by the one overarching goal Kaine leaves undone. The state's steady march toward a transportation crisis has been slowed by a tragic irony: Some 262,000 men and women aren't commuting to work each day because they cannot find a job.

While Virginians yearn for the return of prosperity and economic growth, they are anxiously aware that the state is not ready for the challenges that lie ahead. That task now passes to another governor.