Not About Aaron Rouse

The growing habit of being great to be here.

by Gordon C. Morse

Photo by Lucas Anderton

Steve Martin, meet Aaron Rouse.

Early in his career, Martin would walk out onto the stage and say, “It’s great to be here.”

Then he’d move a few feet away and say, “It’s great to be here, too.”

He would keep shifting about, as the laughter grew, finally saying, “And, wow, it’s really great to be here.”

This was meant to be funny and it was, very.

At the risk of sounding narrow-minded, however, the same approach to political office-holding is less amusing. Hop-scotch through elective office enough and you abuse the trust you’ve been given by the electorate.

Once upon a time – not very long ago – Aaron Rouse won an at-large seat on Virginia Beach City Council and said, in effect, “It’s great to be here.” That was 2019 and Rouse had been elected to represent nearly half a million residents in Virginia’s largest city.

Soon after, he wanted to be mayor, but then withdrew. “As a global pandemic put almost everything in our lives to a complete halt,” Rouse said, “it’s not the time for me to ask for your support and vote.”

Was being mayor of Virginia Beach really Rouse’s object of desire? It hardly seems so. In 2022, Republican state Sen. Jan Kiggins won Virginia’s 2nd District Congressional seat and Rouse immediately found a new love, announcing his bid to replace her in a special election.

That contest ended up, as I understand it, to be the most expensive special election in Virginia Senate history. Rouse narrowly won and upon his arrival in Richmond in 2023 said, in so many words, “it’s great to be here.”

Today, two years later, Rouse has once again returned to hot-pursuit mode. He wants the Democratic Party nomination to be Virginia’s lieutenant governor – a part-time post that sets you up to run for governor – and, really, bon chance.

Not that he needs much luck. Rouse’s substantial cash advantage over his five opponents speaks loudly. It says that Rouse has become very good at raising money and running for elective office.

Ambition is fine. Ambition is normal. But what is this peripatetic activity all about? It’s very difficult to say. Rouse hasn’t lingered long enough in any post to make a fair evaluation. What’s going on?

A chum has an answer: Lambeau Field, October 19, 2008. That was the day when Rouse, playing for the Green Bay Packers against the Indianapolis Colts, managed the longest interception return – 99 yards — in the team’s history.

“That was special,” my friend said, while also pointing out that Rouse did well by Virginia Tech football, too.

Okay. Let’s give Rouse that. Here is a local fellow who went out and did something very well. He excelled. He excelled at that. At football.

This is not exactly about Rouse per se. Seizing the moment, seizing many and varied moments, seizing all the moments that come along, seems to be a growing phenomenon and Rouse is not lacking for company.

Who in the heck is Suhas Subramanyam? My guess is that 99 percent of Virginia could not answer that question. Even so, in January he became a member of Virginia’s congressional delegation, representing the 10th Congressional District.

Subramanyam first won a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates in 2019 and then successfully sought a Virginia State Senate in 2023. Almost immediately, he transitioned to a congressional campaign.

It worked. Last year Subramanyam succeeded Rep. Jennifer Wexton by defeating Republican Mike Clancy. He then declared himself to be the first Indian American elected to Congress from Virginia and the East Coast.

There always has to be a “first.”

Then there’ s John Joseph McGuire III. In 2017, he ran for the House Virginia House of Delegates to succeed retiring Republican Peter Farrell. He won a competitive GOP Republican primary and defeated Democrat Melissa Dart in the general election, taking office on January 10, 2018.

McGuire was twice re-elected to the House and, then, in 2023, sought and won a newly redrawn 10th District seat in the Virginia Senate, taking office in January, 2024.

Like Subramanyam, he hardly paused to fluff up his new seat. Instead, he immediately ran for Congress and defeated incumbent Bob Good in the GOP primary for Virginia’s 5th District.

How about Stella G. Pekarsky? She began her public service career in 2019 by knocking off Thomas Wilson, an incumbent member of the Fairfax County School Board. Four years after that, she defeated incumbent Virginia Sen. George Barker in the Democratic Primary and then won the general election in the fall of 2023.

Made vulnerable by redistricting, Barker’s budget-making experience and seniority argued for his retention. No matter. With substantial support from a single, progressive interest group, Pekarsky promised to work against corporate forces entrenched in Richmond.

So, on to Richmond, Stella!

Forget that. She’s now running for the U.S. House of Representatives in Virginia’s 11th Congressional District, vowing to defeat “the MAGA movement.”

Rouse, Subramanyam, McGuire, Pekarsky. You can easily find others with the same busy political characteristics.

At no point, it would appear, are any of these folks not running for something. They are running continuously and usually for “something else.”

And, in some bizarre fashion, much of this may not be political at all. Look at the websites. Read the words. Watch the campaign films. It’s all highly derivative. You have heard and seen it all previously.

It becomes painfully obvious that these constant candidates have given themselves over to professional handlers. There’s not an ounce of originality to any of it.

The candidates themselves may claim standing at being for this or that, but the overwhelming impression is one of recycled standardized content, exaggerated claims, stock settings and stunning ordinariness. Their “politics” may stake them to an ideological position, but these candidates express themselves with insufferable banality.

The one constant: They end up with a big smile saying, “It’s great to be here.”

For the rest of us, maybe not so great.

At some point it becomes a mockery of representative democracy.

At some point, it’s reasonable to ask whether all this activitity involves personal seriousiness.

At some point, it’s fair to ask these people to sit still, stop looking in the distance and do the job they were elected to do.

Gordon C. Morse has been writing commentary and speeches in Virginia since 1983. This column is republished here and on Bacon’s Rebellion with permission from his Substack account Heart’s Desire.