The man who doesn't break dishes

During his long career in Virginia politics, Bill Bolling has rarely been accused of being a centrist.

He might not be the kind of microphone-seeking controversialist that some of his peers were and are, but the Hanover County Republican has never been anybody's idea of a RINO, or whatever the current slur is for "moderate."

As lieutenant governor, he has supported abortion restrictions and whatever gun-rights activists want, and he has given money to support the state constitutional amendment stripping gays of basic legal rights.

Over a few decades, Bolling has earned every one of his stripes in the culture wars.

So it's especially disorienting to watch him transformed by the race for the 2013 Republican gubernatorial nomination, both by his opponents and by his good humor.

Bolling says he began his career among the most partisan of legislators. But he says he's mellowed.

He's now the kind of guy who can say this about the state party's proposal to extract loyalty oaths from presidential primary voters:

"I think we need to be a party of inclusion, not a party of exclusion. And anything we do that makes people perceive us as being a party of exclusion is not a good thing for our party. If we want to grow our party over time, we need to involve more people in our party."

Bolling, now serving his second term as lieutenant governor so Gov. Bob McDonnell could leap over him on the state depth chart, expected that his patience would earn him clear sailing to the Republican nomination in 2013. That was BC: Before Cuccinelli.

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is not the kind of man to get in line, or to wait. And so, before the holidays, he made it clear that he's running for the party's nomination.

"Although I originally expected to serve as attorney general for another term," Cuccinelli wrote his staff last month, "my job is that of public servant, and I feel that two years from now, I can best serve the people of Virginia from the governor's office."

That's an interesting trick for a politician, mashing up humility and egotism in one sentence. Then again, Cuccinelli has tended to go his own way during his political rise.

He was tea party years before tea party was cool. As attorney general and as a true believer, he's incapable of ignoring a real or perceived provocation from the Obama administration. He's a man who will go out of his way to pick a fight with essentially anyone who doesn't believe what he believes.

He's smart, ideological and formidable. And there's no question what he believes and wants. About anything.

Like McDonnell and unlike Cuccinelli, Bolling has spent the past few years burying his social warrior past under a mountain of practicality and bonhomie. As a team, the governor and his lieutenant have focused instead on what they believe are the core functions of government: Creating an attractive environment for job creation, building roads, educating kids, holding down spending.

And by trying to rebuild Reagan's big tent, which many conservatives have spent the past 25 years demolishing.

"I don't think we build a better Virginia through rigid ideologies and polarizing politics," Bolling said during an editorial board interview last week. "I think we build a better Virginia by focusing on finding solutions to the kitchen-table issues that the people of Virginia are concerned about."

The McDonnell/Bolling administration's solutions to Virginia's problems are right out of the current conservative playbook: Cut public worker pension and benefits, cede control of public roads to private corporations, shift all kinds of obligations onto municipalities, pile on the debt.

You can see similar initiatives in Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida. But Virginia's leaders - unlike in those other states - remain enormously popular.

In part, that's because those solutions are compatible with the mood of a conservative state in rough economic times. In a state where the GOP controls both houses in the legislature, those solutions are also politically expedient and require little compromise.

But it's also because both men have governed with smiles on their faces and an emphasis on results. Style matters.

"If you're looking for some ideologically driven governor," Bolling said, "if you're looking for somebody that likes to break the dishes, that ain't me. So you'll have a choice."

Perhaps as stark as any in recent memory.

Donald Luzzatto is The Virginian-Pilot's editorial page editor. Email: donald.luzzatto@pilotonline.com.