Bob McDonnell's Agenda (est. 1989)

Editor's note: A new voice, Hoax Watcher, is joining the dialogue here at BRD. This blogger will provide inside the Beltway observations on State and National issues, deeper Economics expertise and a much needed, woman's voice to this adventure in citizen's journalism. Enjoy!

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As Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly rightly points out, McDonnell was 34-- THIRTY-FOUR---years old at the time he wrote the thesis. Not exactly the ravings of youth. It was also written in 1989…there were lots of women in the workplace by 1989---not exactly the birth of the feminist movement.

And, yes, Sen.Webb had his own failings with his position on women in the military. Here’s what he wrote in a 1979 article in The Washingtonian:

Lest I be understood too quickly, I should say that I believe most of what has happened over the past decade in the name of sexual equality has been good. It is good to see women doctors and lawyers and executives. I can visualize a woman President. If I were British, I would have supported Margaret Thatcher. But no benefit to anyone can come from women serving in combat.

I may not agree with him on the one issue of women in combat, but Webb’s comments are very different from Bob’s:

Further expenditures [on child-care programs] would be used to subsidize a dynamic new trend of working women and feminists that is ultimately detrimental to the family…

So what made McDonnell change his mind? What caused his conversion to a more liberal attitude? Maybe his new Bible is The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir and Bob Saw the Light. Maybe he was trying to find a wife so he could create a perfect little family and she (OMG!) wanted to work. Maybe he had daughters and he wanted them to have equal opportunities (Could it be true?). Maybe he wanted to go into politics and felt he needed to play a diversity game by hiring women. Maybe he knew there wasn’t a big enough radical conservative base to keep electing him so he simply went undercover.

I think the Washington Post sums it up best:

Nonetheless, in his 14 years in the state's General Assembly, Mr. McDonnell did aggressively pursue a socially conservative agenda largely in line with his thesis. As governor he could do the same, although he would be constrained by a legislature at least partly controlled by Democrats. He could not ban abortion and contraception, but he could help restrict access. The Bob McDonnell who wrote that thesis would make a divisive, disruptive and partisan governor -- a sharp departure from the tradition of generally pragmatic executives who have helped make Virginia one of the better-managed states in the union. Virginians deserve specific answers about where the thinking of his early middle age has shifted, and where it remains consistent.