Tuesday, May 20, 2014

JIM WEBB???

So far I've received four mailings from an outfit called "Ready For Hillary!"  (As far as I'm concerned it might as well have been called "Ready For Herpes!")  It also advertises on political websites I frequent.  There's for sure a load of money behind it, and I'm wondering whose?

I also wonder what these people will do if Hillary bags it.  Who's their fallback candidate?  There has to be one. I'd bet this is about the ambitions of a self-interested clique and not about those of one person.

Just remind yourself that nobody will challenge Hillary.  Except may Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Martin O'Malley, and a few others.

Sanders is acting like a candidate, by the way.  He spoke in New Hampshire and got a good reception.   His Facebook page is said to be more interacted with than that of any other member of Congress.  What he says is clear and brief and pungent and hard to argue with.

There's one big question regarding him, I believe.  It's: Can he get the youth vote? If he does, it'll be because he isn't just an oldster but an elder: someone who has fought for something and can offer conviction and wisdom.  If the younger voters dig him, that might be his ticket to the nomination.  But I don't know what to expect.  They could see him as a bold truth-teller or as a socialist dinosaur.

Well, today we have a news story of '16 interest.  Former Virginia senator James Webb, who's 68, said in an interview that he's considering running.

He didn't say whether he'd do it as a Democrat or as an independent, but he's both.

Webb is a moderate who has supported both parties and has taken some liberal stands without seeming like a liberal.  He's one of the few Dems around who would be at home and popular in a VFW hall.

As an independent candidate, he'd have to get between the two main contenders and be more appealing to most voters than either of them.  Could he?  I don't know. But bear in mind that there have been five centrist independents elected governors of states in recent years: two from Maine and one each from Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Minnesota.  So it doesn't look inherently impossible.

James Henry Webb is from Missouri originally.  He went to Annapolis and is a much-decorated Marine
veteran of Vietnam.  My first memory of him is as a young, curly-haired secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration.  I watched him on TV and thought he could have a political future.   He quit that post because he wanted to expand the Navy while Reagan wanted to shrink it.  And he wasn't a good match for the GOP.

He has made his living as a writer, and one of his books, about the Scotch-Irish to whom this country owes so much, is titled Born Fighting.  That describes him, too.  His instincts may be middle-of-the-road but he isn't afraid of contention.

In '06 he entered the race for the U.S. Senate from Virginia as a Dem and won.  As a senator he had an impact if he concentrated on something, and he proved to be an adept in-fighter, impressing onlookers.  He's obviously smart and energetic.  But he's unpredictable and he seems to be allergic to bullshit.  Hankering for private life, he declined to run again.

During his Senate race he wore his son Jimmy's combat boots every day of the campaign.  Jimmy was serving in Iraq, where Webb thought we shouldn't be.

He defends our mission in Vietnam, and he once wrote an article arguing that "women can't fight"; but even on those topics his thinking was probably driven by data rather than by anything ideological.  And, as mentioned, he was strongly against our invasion of Iraq, which he sees as a disaster.  He's inner-directed and very inclined to realism.

If he ran, he said, one big reason would be because he thinks we have no over-all national security policy, which worries him.  National security hasn't been a sexy issue, but he'd have others as well. At least as early as the start of his Senate term he was concerned about our concentration of wealth, which wasn't much talked about then.   For that he prescribes some leadership, a commodity hard to find in today's Washington.

I have mixed feelings about a Webb candidacy.  But I feel some liking and admiration for him.  And, while he isn't particularly charismatic, I think most Americans would.

The Democrats have run military guys.  But Carter seemed more like a technocrat and Kerry more like an aristocrat.  Webb seems military.

And I'll tell you something else.  If he chose to run as a Democrat and I were a Republican strategist looking to '16, I'd take notice. If I saw Hillary struggling up to the starting line with her five tons of baggage, I'd be chortling and giving my buddies high-fives.  But if I saw Jim Web coming, I'd be crapping my drawers.

Nobody is going to make him out to be a wimp or a novice or a cynical pol in hock to unpopular minorities. If he gets in it, it's a new race as of then.

No comments:

Post a Comment