I don't know anything much about Gov. Kaine except for what I read in this Editorial. I can tell you I think Obama could do much worse. Being the Gov. of Virginia means he will take a lot of heat for this choice and a move like this could take him off the list or move him up in the rankings. I vote for moving him up in the ranking.
VIRGINIA GOV. Timothy M. Kaine (D), a confidant of Barack Obama's and the first governor outside Illinois to endorse the senator's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, is routinely mentioned as a vice-presidential prospect. Many politicians in his position might bend or suspend principle to keep such prospects alive. But this week, Mr. Kaine commuted the death sentence of a mentally deficient triple killer to life in prison without parole. Under the circumstances, the decision, which could well provide convenient fodder for Republican attack ads in a national campaign, was courageous as well as fair-minded and fact-based.
It's going to be hard to rebuild the publics trust in any form of gov. after the last 7 yrs, and plus the next couple of hard yrs coming. If we are to get through the coming financial crisis that no one wants to acknowledge is coming, the public better believe that things will get better or it will spiral further down. To build that trust it will take seeing courageous moves like this. Doing the Right things, almost a novel concept in our current admin.s thinking. That is what people see in Obama, and now I catch a look of it in Gov. Kaine.
I think you would be better served to read the short editorial rather than me try and cut and paste the short story. It would lose it's impact. If you need another teaser, the basics are a man killed 3 people, brutally, and admitted it. The problem is killing him would not be a benefit to society, nor would Mr Walton knows he was being killed and what that means.
Link : A Courageous Commutation