The incredible lightness of being Tim Kaine

Senator Tim Kaine, losing Democrat vice presidential candidate in 2016, seized his opportunity to strut his stuff in Tuesday’s confirmation hearing of Pete Hegseth.  I must admit to being surprised by his less than senatorial appearance: subtract the pink tie and gray jacket, and he looked and acted like a fired up, disheveled, portly weekend basketball warrior looking for someone to chest-bump.

Kaine fired off some fairly astonishing vitriol.  I’m not a student of confirmation hearings — I’ve never watched a single one until now — but Kaine spewed a series of questions I would characterize as evil and manipulative, lacking any trace of generosity or gracefulness.  He proceeded to interrupt Hegseth as the nominee attempted to answer his fusillade of breathless “gotcha” queries.  If I had to guess Kaine’s tactics, I would surmise that this piling on of questions was intentional, meant to confuse and designed for sound bite editing by the progressive media machine — what’s left of it.

This was the same Tim Kaine who had no questions and no misgivings about his onetime running mate, Hillary Clinton, or her husband.

This was the same Tim Kaine who had cozied up oh, so recently to Doug Emhoff of nanny-bonking fame.

This was the same Tim Kaine who had just heard Hegseth testify to his strong Christian faith and his abiding deep belief in his savior, Jesus Christ.

This was the same Tim Kaine who years ago appeared unexpectedly at our then church, St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Dover Parish, Goochland, Virginia, at the invitation of our former minister.  Instead of a sermon that day, the attending and unwitting congregation got Tim Kaine speaking about how his Christian faith guided his political behavior.  To hear him that day, one would have surmised that Tim Kaine didn’t know where politics left off and faith began, or where faith left off and politics began.  He spoke to God’s Frozen People that morning as a devout Catholic, or so he told us.  I felt a brief urge to ask his stance on abortion, but he was our guest that morning, so I did what Episcopalians do best and listened politely.

My assessment of our situation that morning was that our minister had contrived to hold us hostage and forced us to listen to Tim Kaine, then, as now, a United States senator.  What we got that day was a political stump speech liberally sprinkled with Kaine’s spiritual salt and pepper.

This, presumably, was the same Tim Kaine from whom some deep inner darkness poured out in his every question to Pete Hegseth.  If there was anything left of the Christian compassion and forgiveness of which he spoke that “Hostage Sunday,” I didn’t discern it.

Some might argue that Kaine was given these questions, that this was his witting role.  I don’t think that buys him a Get Out of Evil card, because agreeing to be the conduit for someone else’s evil and hate doesn’t buy the forgiveness he clearly wasn’t extending to Hegseth.  Even when Hegseth acknowledged (as all Christians do) that he had fallen short at times in his life and pointed to Jesus Christ as the source of his redemption, Kaine continued to attack.  Mercy wasn’t in the cards Kaine was hurriedly dealing.  

Did today’s Tim Kaine see himself in a new role as an avenging judge?  Did I divine that nuance?  Appearing as a messenger of the party that has designated orthodox and deeply traditional Christians variously as hate groups and targets, I don’t think Sen. Kaine has a lot of room in which to maneuver, so I’d have to question any Tim the Anointed Avenger scenario.

Nor is there a lot of room for me to maneuver.  As a believing Christian, it’s my duty to swallow the special anger I felt watching our Hostage Preacher Man repudiate the faith he shared long ago in the sunlit sanctuary of St. Mary’s.  But swallowing that anger doesn’t mean that I have to remain silent, and it doesn’t mean that Tim Kaine gets off without commentary.

Somehow, I have the feeling that his stunts yesterday will draw well deserved flak.  For my part, I just want folks to know that this same angry, accusatory man stood in a pulpit one Sunday over ten years ago to share a compassionate “faith” so different from the judgmental faith he angrily wielded in Hegseth’s hearing.

Maybe he forgot.  Maybe his faith is a bit hypothetical.  Either way, praise the Lord, and pass the flak jackets.

<p><em>Image: Tim Kaine.  Credit: Gage Skidmore via <a  data-cke-saved-href=

Image: Tim Kaine.  Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

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