Mark Warner gives the nation a high five

By Darrell Laurant

Published: August 27, 2008

Oddly enough for someone who made his fortune in wireless communications, Mark Warner always seems wired. Or maybe just heavily caffeinated.

Tuesday night, he brought this enthusiastic persona to the podium of the Democratic National Convention in Denver, and he was obviously a mile high. He looked as if he wanted to rush out into the audience and give everybody a high five.

I’m a transplant to Virginia (albeit 30 years ago), but I still watched with some apprehension. I like Mark Warner, and he was representing Virginia, and I certainly didn’t want to see him go down in flames in front of the whole nation.

He didn’t.

OK, he’s no Barack Obama. The same Warnerian pronouncements that drew tepid applause from the assembled Democrats would have sent them into a frenzy had Obama—or even Hillary Clinton—uttered them. In some settings (such as the E.C. Glass auduitorium last week), Obama could scratch his nose and trigger a celebration.

Nevertheless, Warner’s boundless optimism is catching. Forget all the rain on our American parade at the moment—the high gas prices, the interminable war in Iraq, the foreclosures, all of it. Warner was telling us to think of the future.

When he went into the cell phone business, he said Tuesday night, his friends thought he was crazy.

“Nobody’s going to want a cell phone in their car,“ he was told.

Ever hear of Nextel?

NBC’s Brian Williams tried to nudge Warner off his cloud in the interview following his keynote speech, but Warner was having none of it.

“So,“ Williams said, “does this mean you’ve decided that being a U.S. Senator is as high as you want to go?“

Or something like that.

Warner just stared at him. Then, he told him he couldn’t wait to get a chance to attack some of the national problems. The presidency? That was the future.

Jim Gilmore’s problem is, more than anything else, one of perception. Warner’s sheer exhuberence has cast his Republican opponent in the role of curmudgeon, the man who wants to keep things the way they are. The anti-future man.

You can be soft-hearted or you can be hard-headed, Warner said in perhaps his most memorable line, but both bring you to the same place: It makes sense to help each other.

Besides, it’s fun!