Jack Kemp. Joe Lieberman. John Edwards. Sarah Palin. Paul Ryan. All ran for vice-president of america and fell brief. All needed to confront the query: what subsequent? The identical destiny befell Tim Kaine, whose flip as operating mate to Hillary Clinton in 2016 led to a catastrophic defeat by Donald Trump and Mike Pence. The US has not recovered, as polarisation, rancour and looming prison trials testify. However Kaine has.
At 7.30am on the Monday after the 2016 election, the Virginia senator was again at work in his workplace. With Trump within the White Home, the work of the Senate proved vital, together with preserving Barack Obama’s signature healthcare legislation. However as time wore on, Kaine discovered methods to nourish his soul – not on the marketing campaign path however the nature path.
To mark his sixtieth birthday and twenty fifth 12 months in public workplace, he invented his personal triathlon in Virginia. On weekends and in Senate recess weeks, Kaine hiked (largely solo) the 559 miles (900km) of the Appalachian Path, biked 321 miles (517km) alongside the crest of the Blue Ridge mountains and canoed all 348 miles (560km) of the James River. He stored a 100-word-a-day diary on his cellphone, uncooked materials for his first ebook, Stroll, Journey, Paddle.
The hike was the hardest, he recollects, averaging about 14 miles (22km) a day with a 30lb (14kg) backpack, largely within the warmth of August.
“I’d have two litre bottles and I’d be getting all the way down to no water and I’ve obtained to get to this subsequent stream and I’d get there and it’d be bone dry after which oh, man, speak about miserable!” the 66-year-old tells the Guardian.
“The bodily problem of the hike was very tough. It wasn’t most likely until I obtained to mile 300 that I give up interested by ‘I don’t want to do that complete factor. Why be so type-A about it?’ However after I handed mile 300 and I solely had 260 left, it’s like, I’m going to complete this however I don’t need to rush.”
A former instructor and civil rights lawyer, Kaine is considered one of solely 30 individuals in US historical past to have been a mayor, governor and senator. In individual, in a convention room on Capitol Hill, he lives as much as adjectives that always tail him: affable, genial, good. Solely in politics does that rely as an insult.
In 2016, the New Republic ran a headline: “Tim Kaine Is Too Boring to Be Clinton’s Operating Mate.” The Washington Publish questioned: “What’s a pleasant man like Senator Tim Kaine doing in a marketing campaign like this?” Kaine himself quipped on NBC: “I am boring. Boring is the fastest-growing demographic on this nation.”
True to type, nobody ought to look to Stroll, Journey, Paddle for tales of Teddy Roosevelt-esque derring-do. Like different vice-presidential close to misses, Kaine by no means fairly turned a star. To those that encountered him within the nice open air, he was simply one other man in baseball cap and mountaineering shorts.
He recollects: “I might say possibly 1 / 4 recognised me and of that quarter, half didn’t say they recognised me. You’re out on the path to loosen up they usually get that. I realized there’s a good looking Emily Dickinson poem about as soon as being well-known:
Fame is a bee.
It has a music—
It has a sting—
Ah, too, it has a wing.
“Individuals would see me and for those who see any individual they usually’re not dressed the way in which you usually see them, you’re like, ‘I believe I sort of know you, however I’m undecided.’ Typically individuals would know me. Most frequently they wouldn’t. After which generally they had been, ‘I believe I do know you. What do you do?’ ‘I work in Washington.’ ‘What do you do in Washington?’ ‘I do some stuff in politics’. ‘What?’ ‘I’m a United States senator.’”
The journey took about 30 months, from Could 2019 to October 2021, a jaw-dropping interval of American historical past that spanned two impeachment trials, a worldwide pandemic, racial justice protests, a presidential election and the January 6 assault on the Capitol. When the Senate was in session, Kaine had a key half to play. When in nature, he might tune out the noise and ponder his religion in friendship, God (he grew up in an Irish Catholic family) and America.
He likens the expertise to a camper who wakes up, stuffs all the things into their backpack and will get going.
“I realised in the middle of the hike that’s how I handled 2016. I confirmed up proper again to work. I began working. I mentioned, ‘I’ll kind all of it out later.’
“The hike was primarily on my own. That prolonged time, each the solitude but in addition the appreciation of nature and your humility within the grand scheme of issues, was useful in taking the stuff out of the pack that wanted to be washed and folded and put away the best method.”
His epiphany got here not round how Trump gained, or relitigating what errors the Clinton-Kaine marketing campaign may need made, however reckoning with a deeper query: why is America going by this darkish chapter? Early one morning, Kaine was mountaineering alone in fog and rain and nearing Mount Rogers, the very best peak in Virginia, when he thought concerning the biblical E book of Job.
A devoted man who has all of it, Job begins to lose his household, his enterprise, his cash and his well being, compelling him to ask if the universe is pointless and neighbours to imagine he’s struggling divine retribution.
Kaine says: “There’s two explanations of why individuals or possibly nations undergo: since you did one thing improper or possibly it’s simply all pointless and random. The reader of the story is aware of that neither is the case: Job’s being examined. The tip of the story is, as mad as he’s at God, he nonetheless is true to his ideas after which what was misplaced to him is restored.”
Kaine was simply days away from Trump’s first Senate impeachment trial.
“I’d by no means been on a jury ever in my life, even on a site visitors case. I’m similar to, I’m 61 years outdated and I believed I understood this nation. What’s occurring right here?
“It’s not essentially punishment and it’s not essentially random, however it could possibly be a take a look at. So we keep true to our ideas. Perception in non secular equality – are we going to kick Muslims round? Our perception in free press – are we going to reveal journalists to intimidation, rule of legislation? No individual ought to be above the legislation.
“I began to consider the virtues that we declare about ourselves, a few of that are more true than others, none of which we are able to completely attain. However possibly that is considered one of these moments to see whether or not we’re going to remain true to precept or abandon precept, and if we keep true to precept, possibly we’ll find yourself sadder however wiser however we’ll flip a nook and really feel like we’ve handed. I believe we’re surviving the take a look at however I don’t assume we handed it but.”
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No take a look at was extra extreme than January 6, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an try and overturn Joe Biden’s win. Having develop into much less hooked on his cellphone throughout his communions with nature, Kaine forgot to take it into the Senate chamber.
“It was hours after the start of the assault, once we had been lastly over in a committee room they usually turned on TV screens, that I realised, ‘Oh, man, that is what my dad and mom are seeing, this what my children are seeing, that is what my spouse was seeing.’ So, ‘[Senator] Martin Heinrich [of New Mexico], give me your cellphone, I obtained to name individuals fast!’
“It was a day that I by no means would have imagined, by no means will overlook and hope is rarely repeated. It was very highly effective and my overwhelming emotion was anger. There was a second once we had been within the committee room that CNN known as the Georgia Senate race for Jon Ossoff, which meant that the Dems now had the Senate, and it was very very like, in the midst of this assault, the American public are saying, ‘OK, we’ve seen sufficient right here, you guys take the wheel for some time.’ They handed the keys to us.”
Kaine went as much as the Republican senator Lindsey Graham and advised him Democrats wouldn’t have taken the bulk however for Trump’s lies. Graham didn’t disagree. Kaine mentioned the identical factor to the Republican chief, Mitch McConnell, and noticed a stage of anger in his eyes he had by no means witnessed earlier than.
“The opposite factor that occurred about three hours after we had been within the room, the Virginia state police cruisers arrive to assist the Capitol police. I went over to [fellow Virginia senator] Mark Warner and mentioned the final time there was an riot towards america, Virginia was main it. Now right here there’s an riot that’s being impressed by the president of america and Virginia is coming to the rescue of the union. We had been each very emotional as we thought of that.”
In his ebook, Kaine, a senator since 2013, acknowledges painful classes a couple of nation he thought he understood. Whereas he has all the time been an optimist, he writes, Trump is “a symptom of a nationwide illness”. Trump is energising and galvanising for Democrats but in addition brings “a stage of dread and rigidity” to on a regular basis life.
Kaine explains: “I used to be a missionary in Honduras after I was a younger man and it was a army dictatorship and it made me be much less naive: this authoritarian factor remains to be actual, lots of people stay that method. However even then, after I got here again, I nonetheless was naive as a result of I believed that might by no means be one thing we’d see in america, the authoritarian impulse.
“But it surely’s Donald Trump and it’s [Nayib] Bukele [of El Salvador] and [Viktor] Orbán [of Hungary] and [Vladimir] Putin [of Russia]. You simply go place to put, continent to continent, you’re going to see examples of this. The battle between the authoritarianism and the democratic impulses could be very stay proper now right here and all over the place. That’s the worldwide illness that I’m speaking about. Donald Trump is a symptom. He’s not the trigger.”
Okaine is considered one of a small group to have run on a US presidential ticket. His recommendation to Biden and Kamala Harris: proceed to stress democracy and freedom, which join January 6, Russia’s struggle on Ukraine and rightwing threats to reproductive rights. He additionally believes they’ve accomplishments to promote, together with one of the best post-Covid restoration of any main financial system.
“Individuals aren’t feeling the vibe but,” Kaine admits, attributing this to a Covid “hangover”.
“As I journey round Virginia, that is such a typical phrase: ‘I’m doing fairly nicely however I’m not so certain about three months from now.’ They acknowledge first that economically issues are OK however, simply across the nook, ‘I’m certain what I’m going to see.’ The Biden-Harris ticket – and I’m on the ticket too as a result of I’m operating in 2024 – we simply need to promote, promote, promote. The excellent news is we now have lots to promote.”
The choice, a replay of 2016, placing Trump again within the White Home, is an excessive amount of to bear.
“I don’t wish to ponder it. We’re developing on celebrating our 250th birthday in 2026. I need there to be a vigorous democracy for our youngsters and grandkids to inherit. And by vigorous, that doesn’t imply simply do it the way in which we did it. Every era has to determine how you can renew these traditions and make them higher.
“However I don’t view Donald Trump as a man who’s dedicated to establishments: one man one vote, free press, unbiased judiciary, professionalised civil service, civilian management of the army. Donald Trump is dedicated to himself however he’s not dedicated to democratic establishments and virtues. He’s performed huge hurt to them.
“We are able to get up from that and, like Job, follow our ideas, develop into sadder and wiser however nonetheless cross the take a look at that’s earlier than us. However he’ll do huge injury to this nation and to others on the planet with a second time period.”
