Do not yield to the enemies of promise.

by Gordon C. Morse

The 2025 race to be Virginia’s next governor enters summer a lackluster affair and it need not continue in that condition. Both candidates have inherently interesting backgrounds and, you know, it’s okay to talk about yourself.

The key being that it’s you doing the talking. Establishing your authenticity as a leader – as well as your individuality as a human being – by means of political consultants is akin to leading a strutting brass band into a dead-end alley. It’s looks good, but goes nowhere. (Yes, just like in Animal House.)

It will be well lit, however. Hand that to the political TV craftsmen. Unprecedented levels of political ad spending have caused production values to soar as well. The sets, the people, the visual techniques – everything in these ads looks terrific.

Ah, there’s the center of attention: the candidate. Such aplomb. Such self-confidence. Rest assured, we’re looking at a stand-up person.

All fights – no matter for what purpose – will be courageously fought.

All ideals will be brilliant conceived.

All things, all hopes, all dreams will be won and at no extra cost to anyone.

The cliches mount up by the bushel.

We’ve seen all these commercials before. These are the ones that introduce the candidates.

Eventually, the candidates will stop saying, “Hi,” and start in after each other. The meter will then move from boredom to tedium.

The process is well known. Research. Focus groups. Polls.

Then whittling. The campaign managers do lots and lots of expensive whittling until they find what they need.

This past week, for instance, an email appeared asking for participation in an on-line voter poll, I happily participated and it was telling.

Such polls get designed for specific interests and purposes. Someone is hatching a plan.

But it works both ways. The sharper the interrogatories, the more obvious the intents.

In this case, the poll meisters took a group of 20-25 core questions and bundled them into varying groups of five. They wanted to discover your highest priorities and put them in competition with each other. That way they would end up with your highest, highest priorities.

It was maddeningly repetitive. “Which of these matter most to you?” it kept asking.

The point, obviously, is to take those highest, highest priorities and have their candidate regurgitate it all back to us. You weirdly end up talking to yourself through the candidate.

Some of the ads are telling.

Take, for instance, an early introductory piece for former Rep. Abigail Spanberger, the Democrat. An aerial shot – doubtless a drone of the unexploding variety – comes in over rolling wooded hills (which I charitably assume not to be footage of Romania) accompanied by a plunking piano.

Quick scenes follow: There’s Portsmouth along the Elizabeth River where the Waterside ferry pulls up and, of course, on the opposite riverbank there’s always a giant Navy ship getting spiffed up.

Next we see the Basilica of St. Andrews and up Jefferson Street in the distance sits the Hotel Roanoke. (Ah, the Regency Room. The waiters once wore tuxedos.)

Then the scene cuts back to Hampton Roads for an Adobe stock shot of Norfolk’s skyline. That’s followed with an overhead view of Fredericksburg’s John Paul Jones House, the one residence the famous sailor called his own.

“From our stunning landscape to our diverse communities, Virginia is a lot of things,” announces Spanberger. “Most importantly, it’s home. I grew up here.”

Oh. Home. That’s it. It must be somewhere in here between Roanoke, Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia.

But that’s not exactly the point, is it? Abigail just wants us to know she has a home, there’s a family in it (presumably hers) and that it’s located in Virginia.

And there’s the candidate in the kitchen, digging lasagna out of an aluminum pan for her three daughters and her husband, Adam.

Did the film production crew get a bite? How many times did they shoot this? Were there multiple pans of lasagna? Was the lasagna any good?

These are the sort of idiotic questions that roll through your mind, as you watch this. Mine, anyway.

Again, the production values of this video are solid and impressively professional. Which is the problem. It’s so solid and professional, it’s slick.

Despite the glossy banality of these productions, no one should conclude that Abigail is a slick and facile and superficial human being. For Pete’s sake, she was a spy. A cloak and dagger person. A James Bond/Harry Palmer type.

Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears is a Jamaican immigrant who ended up in the U.S. Marine Corps. That, by itself, is immediately intriguing and notable.

I have never met a member of the Marine Corps who wasn’t interesting. Ignore the storm-the-beaches credo, the Marine Corps is up to its brass buckle in iconoclasts. That’s its legacy.

So let’s hear about that. What did you take away from the Corps, Winsome? How much of it is still in you? Which values did you embrace as your own?

Look, we have two people who have lived distinctive lives. Why flat-line those lives into polished videos? Both got into the work of national defense. Why? What did they learn in the process? How did their life experiences shape their thinking about Virginia’s priorities?

And, while they’re at it, as a window to their thinking, where does Virginia sit – in their opinion — in the general order of the cosmos?

For that matter, what is the role of state government? How do we get things done and do so efficiently?

It may seem like an odd place to seek advice for political success, but while Cyril Connolly’s 1938 “Enemies of Promise” is about the challenge of writing literature that endures, its scope and insights raise valuable questions about life, ambition, and the forces that shape us.

For example, Connolly identifies a host of “enemies”—not just of literary promise, but of personal fulfillment and achievement. These include domesticity, politics, drink, sex, escapism, and the burdens of success or failure.

It’s a mediation on the obstacles to any lasting achievement. Understanding these obstacles is essential for anyone striving to accomplish something meaningful. The message is fundamentally about self-awareness.

Can these candidates do that? Can they share their self-awareness with the voting public? Video virtuosity won’t deliver the goods. Emotional and intellectual honestly might. If these two candidates have the heart for that, in this election year, it may serve them well.

Us, too

Gordon C. Morse has been writing commentary and speeches in Virginia since 1983. This column his republished with permission from his Substack account Heart’s Desire.