Bob McDonnell: Dad

I'm the father of an amazing daughter. I'm 34. When Bob McDonnell was 34, he had two daughters, one a wonderful 5-year old girl who would grow up to serve her country in the U.S. Army. Family life is critically important to Mr. McDonnell. Family dinner every night is important. While he was in graduate school at Christian Broadcasting Network University (now Regent), it is likely he had dinner with his wife and daughters every night.

That means that while he was writing a thesis which called the advances in women's rights illogical and ill-founded, he came home to a house full of women. He actually sat and wrote a detailed thesis calling for the rolling back of the advances and opportunities then afforded to his wife and daughters, and came home to eat dinner with them every day.

As a husband and dad, I cannot imagine coming home to dinner with my family knowing I had spent that day fighting to limit their rights, reduce their opportunities, even stifle the equality of their pay. And the kicker is, he didn't stop in 1989, realizing it was a "youthful" (at 34?!) indiscretion. In 2001, a full twelve years after writing the thesis and in the full bloom of his career in the Assembly, he voted against equal pay for women and men.

And then he went home and had dinner with his wife and daughters.

It takes principles and values to do that. It takes true commitment to a cause. I don't happen to share that cause. I happen to disdain those principles and values which would limit my daughter's future, but I cannot deny the commitment.