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.

MEANWHILE, IN CANADA...

Things have been rough lately for Hillary Rodham Clinton, as you may have noticed.

There was Monica Lewinsky's bitter but accurate complaint that Hillary's reaction to her husband's adultery was to "blame the woman".  Then there was an article in Politico Magazine for May/June, 2014 in which journalists Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman knowledgeably claimed that Hillary hates the press and fears the attacks that will come if she runs for president.  Then Thrush followed up on that for Politico with a description of Hillary's '08 campaign, which he covered for Newsday.  According to him, the campaign's culture was one of finger-pointing anger and deep suspicion directed against reporters and outsiders, while Hillary creatively relieved this self-induced stress with activities like throwing an aide's cell phone down a flight of stairs.

Ah, but then came a bright moment!  Veteran political operative Robert Shrum wrote a column in which he declared that Hillary will be "unchallenged" for the Democratic nomination and will be our next president.

But no sooner was Shrum's prognostication offered up than a speech by Joe Biden was reported in which he stated that the American middle class's woes began not under George W. Bush but earlier under Bill Clinton. It couldn't be more obvious that Hillary is being challenged.  And Biden is good at projecting that I'm-really-a-populist-at-heart thing, while what Hillary projects is more like I'm-well-connected-and-you-better-watch-your-back-if-you-get-in-my-way.

A Hillary nomination, were it possible, would make the '16 campaign be about Boko Haram, Benghazi, Hillarycare, Whitewater, women who bake cookies, Vince Foster, and of course the charming Monica.
All that's necessary to avoid this is to choose a new face as a candidate.

And lo! the Anti-Hillary has appeared.  Unfortunately, he has appeared not in the United States but in Canada.

The Liberals - Canada's equivalent of the Democrats - were hurting not long ago.  In the last national election they came in third - something unprecedented - behind the governing Conservatives and the lefty New Democrats.  And third place is where the Liberals remained in the polls, till they did something smart.

They chose as their new leader Justin Trudeau, the 41-year-old teacher son of their greatest prime minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau.  And immediately they shot to first place in the polls, and they've stayed there.  That was over a year ago.

Trudeau has a young family and was at first unwilling to head the party.  But he finally agreed to.  And he's one of the most attractive people I've seen in politics anywhere.  He isn't intellectual and witty and arrogant like his father but rather warm, good-natured, and unflappable.  You get the feeling that he isn't mean but can be as tough as he has to be.  The last time Canada saw charisma like his was in his old man. The last time we saw it here was when JFK walked among us.

To watch a brief, cynical, and funny but revealing treatment of Trudeau's impact, go to YouTube and type in "Justin Trudeau Song".  You can see for yourself how he comes across.

Trudeau immediately put through party reforms, involving the Liberal electorate in formulating the platform and allowing it rather than insiders to choose the candidates; he let non-Liberals register as "friends" of the party and also participate in this.  It has gone over well and produced some enthusiasm.

The Conservatives had succeeded in preemptively taking down Trudeau's two predecessors as Liberal leader, using attack ads. They tried to do the same to him.  They did things like show pictures of him being a good sport and performing a partial striptease for charity, then declared that he's in over his head.  And the ads backfired horribly!  Polls show that seeing them has made voters more likely to vote Liberal.

Underestimating Trudeau isn't safe.  Another thing he did for charity was to have a boxing match with a young Conservative senator named Patrick Brazeau.  Brazeau is big and a real bruiser.  Trudeau is muscular but lean and doesn't have Brazeau's body mass.  Brazeau boasted about what he was going to do to the pretty-boy.  Trudeau's wife was worried, but he took her to the gym and had her watch while he sparred with men of Brazeau's type, which he had been doing for years.  And when the two politicians fought, Trudeau surprised many by winning.

Like Hillary Clinton, Justin Trudeau is seen to possess inevitability.  But his doesn't come from political schemers and journalists.  It's just there.

I find it hard to believe that in a country of 300 million people we can't find a leader with qualities comparable to his. We seem for some reason to be sunk in defeatism.  All I can say is, we'd best get out of it and start expecting more of ourselves.