By Bob Gibson
Charlottesville political blogger

    First, there were the Ten Commandments. A serious list. Instructive. Godly.
    Several millennia later, there was David Letterman’s Top Ten. Sly. Insulting. Ungodly.
    List making, once the province of grocery shoppers and Myers-Briggs personalities whose types end in J, has spread like wildfire through social networks—from the columns of newspapers to the cyber diaries of teens. 

    As lists go, Facebook’s “25 Random Things About Myself” has got millions of Americans typing. Revealing. Appealing. Redressing Ego.

    Virginia’s vibrant political culture, which once listed right and now writes lists, has discovered a central list of a few dozen flagrant factoids.
    This 25-point compendium of Commonwealth commonalities is not carved in stone but was instead found taped to the heel of George Washington’s right boot in the middle of Thomas Jefferson’s restored State Capitol. (I can’t say why my list was taped there and fully disclaim all responsibility for listing 25 so obvious things.)
    1.  Rampant hubris, once a cash crop of Wall Street elites, is now smoked in Virginia’s political parlors. Once inhaled, this potent drug of “I know best and you know so much less” promotes memory loss and pork consumption.

    2.  Humility, its powerful antidote, sits unconsumed in surplus warehouses.

    3.  Speaking of smokes, Richmond feels disoriented at having to turn its back on a cigarette pack in restaurants. A town built on tobacco finds that quitting cold turkey can induce a splitting headache.

    4.  Richmond needs a patch. Perhaps a large green corporate-sponsored patch with a diamond would be the kind of civic place to bring baseball back to a town whose largest monuments are former tobacco warehouses and abandoned baseball stadiums. 

    5.  Politicians can be bad for baseball. Their attempts to lure teams with offers of taxpayer-enhanced stadiums turn off fans before falling far shy of shovel-ready stimulus status.

    6.  Virginia is so ready for a real, shovel-ready stimulus that a dash of bipartisanship could restore some faith that what flows out of Washington can taste better than Potomac swill. 

    7.  Entitlement is practiced far less in the housing industry and far more in the corridors of power. Politicians feel entitled to promulgate their types of stimulus. See No. 1.

    8. The media would cover “Promulgate” if it were a scandal involving sex at a high school prom.

    9. Bipartisanship is the most widely subscribed-to trend in politics.

    10.  Despite being given tons of lip service, bipartisanship remains vastly under-practiced. If everyone who praised bipartisan cooperation in policy discussions actually practiced the art, much more good would flow from government.

    11. People say they want good news from politics. And they want practical answers from government.

    12. People expect bad news.  They know partisan gridlock and the permanent campaign can block any progress.

    13. People get less than they deserve.  Voters would like more compromise and results, not rigidity.

    14. Despite Nos. 1-7, politicians tend to be good people.

    15. Politicians get a bad rap from far fewer than 10 percent of their ilk.

    16. The well more than 90 percent of ethical politicians often find themselves stymied by the poisons of the permanent campaign.

    17. Ethics, which is obedience to the unenforceable, is enjoying a timely revival.

    18. Commandments I-X still inform ethics.

    19. A revival of ethical and practical politics is under way on both sides of the aisle.

    20. Republicans and Democrats actually do work well together more often than people realize or than the media reports. Outbreaks of good news tend to be lost somewhere behind sports.

    21. For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. There is a time to be partisan, usually around election time.

    22. “Now the time has come. There are things to realize,“ to quote The Chambers Brothers. “The rules have changed today.“

    23. The economy is in enough of a mess to try a time to break down and a time to build up.

    24. As Jefferson said 214 years ago, “Our citizens are divided into two political sects. One which fears the people most, the other the government.“ Fear of economic collapse could again break down old lines and reorder priorities enough to recharge the pursuit of happiness.

  25. Most politicians pay their taxes like regular folks, and when they don’t they deserve a non-cash stimulus to do better.