Virginia is one of the models of economic success that presumed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama may be using in his campaign, according to an upcoming New York Times magazine article.
I found the story by Times economics columnist David Leonhardt while scrolling around the Web today and thought it might be useful for Baconauts everywhere. The piece comes out this Sunday just for the Dem confab in Denver.
It shows how the Democrats are considering modern economic revival models as keys to the nation’s future and how Gov. Tim Kaine, still a possible Obama VP candidate, has influenced thinking. Here’s a quote form the upcoming Times magazine piece:
“I came to think of this part of Obama’s agenda as the Virginia model, thanks to Tim Kaine, Virginia’s governor, who was one of the first Democrats to endorse Obama. Last year, Kaine began making the case to (Obama economic adviser Austan) Goolsbee that the campaign should view Virginia as a model for the rest of the country. In just a few decades, the state has managed to transform itself in precisely the way that economists think the United States now must — to a higher-wage economy with a more-educated population, a place that has prospered even while losing many of its old-line manufacturing jobs. And it did so with a crucial shove from the government.
“For much of the 20th century, Virginia was a poor state, but after World War II, with the cold war under way and the military growing, well-paying defense contractors began to sprout up around the Pentagon, in northern Virginia. By the 1970s, Darpa, the Pentagon’s research arm, began working on a computer network, which soon spawned a new form of communication: electronic mail. That computer system eventually became the Internet, and Northern Virginia suddenly had the beginnings of a brand-new industry. In recent decades, Virginia has also invested money in the port near Norfolk and has vastly expanded its colleges and universities. Today the state’s per-capita income is 7 percent higher than the national average.
The trick for someone trying to replicate Virginia’s success is figuring out which investments to make. As any Chicago School economist would remind you, the federal government has made its share of mistakes in this area, a recent example being subsidies for ethanol, which Obama, a farm-state senator, has championed and McCain has opposed. But Obama at least seems to have learned one lesson from the experience: His proposed new infrastructure spending would be overseen by a bipartisan board of unelected officials, rather than members of Congress. “
Obama’s platform calls for a $50 billion fund to improve infrastructure such as roads and bridges and boost scientific R&D.
Virginia is getting mentionned, obviously, because it is an important swing state. But it also shows how Virginia is becoming bluer by the day. The Good Ole Days of Republican dominance are past. There’s a new Old Dominion afoot and it’s getting noticed.
Peter Galuszka
