As the transportation fight grinds on with the all the pleasure of a toothache, the attitude of Virginia legislators toward Tim Kaine recalls a schoolboy's taunt: "I'm not scared of you!"

The bully pulpit of the governorship notwithstanding, Kaine is becoming irrelevant -- certainly to Republicans and increasingly to fellow Democrats -- at an inopportune time. This is not a result of his actions, or inaction, but rather the state constitution.

The only-in-Virginia prohibition against governors seeking consecutive terms means they become lame ducks in year three of a four-year term. The slow, irreversible transformation begins once a governor completes the single full budget of his administration.

Voters may still look with fondness on Kaine -- never mind he had a 46 percent approval rating in a recent poll -- but legislators in both parties are looking beyond him, wondering who they'll be running with, from or against in the 2009 elections for governor and House of Delegates.

Thus, the three-years-and-running quarrel over how to close the $1 billion-and-growing hole in the highway budget becomes a waiting game, interrupted by occasional quacking by the short-timer on the Third Floor.

Hunter Andrews, the acerbic, high-handed former state senator from Hampton who lorded over his chamber for nearly three decades, put it this way: "Governors come and go, but the legislature goes on forever."

For Kaine, the ineffectiveness that comes over time is compounded by the here and now of a crummy economy and crass partisanship.

Rising fuel prices and falling housing and motor-vehicle sales make higher taxes a difficult sell. Further, the prospect of a serious debate on new and different long-term sources of road revenue is diminished by Kaine's fading stature.

Forgive the Hillary Clinton-like flourish, but it takes a governor -- at the height of his powers -- to press this issue, rally the public and seek the necessary legislative, regulatory and administrative reforms.

Redistricting only makes it easier for Kaine's opponents to resist him. Nowhere is this more evident than in the House, where a Republican majority, though reduced, endures because of the artful manner in which it drew districts in 2001.

Republicans created, in effect, minority districts wherein narrow bands of the electorate, often anti-tax conservatives, have disproportionate influence. The key to winning and holding such House seats: sucking up to the right. It's not always a pretty sight, but survival compels it.

And it's not just accommodating the grass roots to prevent nomination challenges. Republicans must kowtow to the House leadership, lest they risk such punishment as losing prized committee seats. Senate Republicans, many of them recovering tax-aholics, have become similarly sheepish.

For Kaine, all the wrong factors are aligning at the wrong time. Though he says he's prepared to fight again for a transportation fix in the election-year session of the General Assembly, he has few cards to play, and none of them aces.

With the biggest megaphone in town, Kaine can continue to attempt to shape public opinion, perhaps hoping voters are angrier in November 2009 than they are now about unyielding traffic, unreliable mass transit and unsafe roads.

This means the next 18 months -- the last in Kaine's term -- may not be productive. They will be noisy. Quack!
Contact Jeff E. Schapiro at (804) 6496814 or jschapiro@timesdispatch.com. He provides news analysis each Friday at 8:33 a.m. on WCVE radio (88.9 FM).