Kaine Has Obama's Appeal, and His Flaws

In 10 years, Tim Kaine has steered a meteoric rise from mayor of Richmond to governor of Virginia to prospective Democratic VP candidate. In many ways, writes the New York Times, Kaine's story mirrors that of Barack Obama: a liberal who speaks openly about religion, he disdains Washington and has sought to bridge racial divides. But he has no foreign policy experience, and even the governor's supporters admit that his record is thin.

Kaine, like Obama, trained as a lawyer at Harvard before moving to Virginia, where he joined a black Catholic church and sang in the choir. As governor, he won plaudits for his handling of the Virginia Tech massacre, in which he told students that he had cried for the victims. But his legislative accomplishments are few; said one UVa professor, "He really is in the bottom quartile of governors."