Oh-Eight! Oh-Eight!!!
Mark Warner is already campaigning, or might as well be.
Warner's stump speech is well-honed for a national audience. He races through his bio: grew up middle class in Indiana, Illinois and Connecticut, was the first member of his family to graduate from college (George Washington University), attended Harvard Law School and helped start two failed businesses before hooking up with a fledgling cellular phone enterprise known as Nextel. One big dollar sign followed by nine digits later, Warner became one of Northern Virginia's top venture capitalists while taking periodic forays into politics -- including an unsuccessful run for the Senate against Republican John Warner in 1996.
Mark Warner, who is married and has three daughters, was elected governor in 2001, a Democratic victory in a state that hasn't supported a Democrat for president since 1964. In his speeches today, Warner emphasizes his ability to appeal to Republican voters and the need for Democrats to compete in more than just 16 states in national elections. He touts his success in the private sector and Virginia's recent designation as the "best-managed state" in a survey by Governing magazine.
"The Democratic Party has always been at its best when it's seen as the party of the future," Warner says in a line that draws nods. It behooves Democrats, he says, to reframe the debate from liberal vs. conservative to "future vs. past."
Warner is fond of the New Economy jargon of the late 1990s: biz-speak terms like "value-added," "human capital" and "space" -- as in the wireless space , or the corporate space , or the government space (all of which -- "at the end of the day" -- fall within Warner's "comfort zone").
"We need to incent our auto industry to get better fuel efficiency," he tells a Harvard student.
Warner talks fast and in a throaty voice reminiscent of Jack Kemp's. He emphasizes how it's important for a politician to be "comfortable in his own skin," although the governor can sometimes appear anything but, particularly around the media. Reporters who have covered him say that getting Warner to relax, even off the record, is like pulling horse teeth.
He evokes, at once, a supreme sense of self-confidence and an expectation that a chandelier could fall on his head at any second. He is a fidgety 6-4, speaks in halting cadences and takes long pauses before answering questions, as if his brain is churning with every potentially catastrophic permutation of his answer.
He's gonna have to get a lot more comfortable around the media, and soon. His people need to book him on The Daily Show or something to break him in.
BTW, Governor Warner has a shiny new PAC site but still no campaign site. Come on Mark, only 27 months until the primaries!!!
Warner's stump speech is well-honed for a national audience. He races through his bio: grew up middle class in Indiana, Illinois and Connecticut, was the first member of his family to graduate from college (George Washington University), attended Harvard Law School and helped start two failed businesses before hooking up with a fledgling cellular phone enterprise known as Nextel. One big dollar sign followed by nine digits later, Warner became one of Northern Virginia's top venture capitalists while taking periodic forays into politics -- including an unsuccessful run for the Senate against Republican John Warner in 1996.
Mark Warner, who is married and has three daughters, was elected governor in 2001, a Democratic victory in a state that hasn't supported a Democrat for president since 1964. In his speeches today, Warner emphasizes his ability to appeal to Republican voters and the need for Democrats to compete in more than just 16 states in national elections. He touts his success in the private sector and Virginia's recent designation as the "best-managed state" in a survey by Governing magazine.
"The Democratic Party has always been at its best when it's seen as the party of the future," Warner says in a line that draws nods. It behooves Democrats, he says, to reframe the debate from liberal vs. conservative to "future vs. past."
Warner is fond of the New Economy jargon of the late 1990s: biz-speak terms like "value-added," "human capital" and "space" -- as in the wireless space , or the corporate space , or the government space (all of which -- "at the end of the day" -- fall within Warner's "comfort zone").
"We need to incent our auto industry to get better fuel efficiency," he tells a Harvard student.
Warner talks fast and in a throaty voice reminiscent of Jack Kemp's. He emphasizes how it's important for a politician to be "comfortable in his own skin," although the governor can sometimes appear anything but, particularly around the media. Reporters who have covered him say that getting Warner to relax, even off the record, is like pulling horse teeth.
He evokes, at once, a supreme sense of self-confidence and an expectation that a chandelier could fall on his head at any second. He is a fidgety 6-4, speaks in halting cadences and takes long pauses before answering questions, as if his brain is churning with every potentially catastrophic permutation of his answer.
He's gonna have to get a lot more comfortable around the media, and soon. His people need to book him on The Daily Show or something to break him in.
BTW, Governor Warner has a shiny new PAC site but still no campaign site. Come on Mark, only 27 months until the primaries!!!