Gotta love the headline, gotta love this:
...there is another reason the Virginia Senator would make an excellent vice presidential nominee. As he's demonstrated this week, Webb can be a masterful legislative tactician.[...]
...there is no denying that the Virginia Senator has successfully maneuvered the presumptive Republican nominee into the profoundly unpopular position of being against a measure designed to honor the service and the sacrifice of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. Can Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius say the same thing? Or Ohio Governor Ted Strickland? Former Georgia Senator Sam Nunn has been praised for his national security expertise. But did he resign from the Reagan-era Pentagon, as Webb did, after resisting orders to downsize the Navy?
The question is no longer whether Barack Obama should select Jim Webb as his nominee. It is whether he can justify not doing so. Even if Webb murdered someone in an alleyway in a fit of pique or been paid vast sums by the Chinese Politburo for detailed intelligence about American naval vessels, he would still be a far stronger and more appealing vice presidential nominee than Hillary Clinton.
If you agree with The Atlantic, please sign the petition. Thanks, and go Obama/Webb! :)
OHN DALTON Navy Secretary Dalton came to McCain's office one day and vowed to protect Commander Robert Stumpf. The onetime leader of the Blue Angels and a decorated pilot in the Persian Gulf War, Stumpf was under attack for a fleeting involvement in the notorious Tailhook escapade. When McCain thought Dalton had backed off by sending a Navy lawyer to interrogate Stumpf, he called the Secretary and said: "I don't believe you're standing up for the Navy. We will have nothing to do with one another anymore." And he hung up the phone.
and while McCain was originally critical of the Navy when the story first broke, he complained about how long the investigation was taking. And there were tails about his own participation as a naval aviator.
As far as a VP for Obama, remember Webb's victory in Virginia was a squeaker. The Obama campaign will want somebody who can deliver a swing state. Besides, I think Webb is enjoying begin a senator just fine.
2) the person who won the election in 2009 would serve the remaining 3+ years of the term.
We're fighting a two front war.
Obama has zero military credentials.
McCain has beaucoup.
Extracting our military assets from the quicksands of Iraq is going to lay the extractor open to vicious anti-patriotic, anti-American, anti-military attacks from the right. Senator Obama would be very vulnerable on this score. Senator Webb is invulnerable. Not only that, but Webb has maintained close ties to both active and recently retired top Marine generals and Navy admirals who know he has the armed services' best interests at heart. Not that his reputation as a champion of the military needed any reinforcement, but Webb's GI Bill has elevated, if that's possible, his standing among our servicemen (excepting the uniformed GOP apparatchiks in the Pentagon).
If, for some unfathomable reason, it's not Webb, then General Clark, as noted previously, is the only other potential VP who could stand alongside Senator Obama with a big red, white and blue shield.
As Kennedy,Eisenhower,Reagan and others have done, Vice Presidents heal the party, gather votes. Obama is a black Webb, he's more successful than Webb at fundraising, but he eschewed the fairs where you eat food you might not otherwise eat and it took him awhile before he came to the conclusion,to win I must get off my diet and suck up.
If Webb is reelected, I can see VP material because he doesn't have the crutch of George Allen. As Josh said, the more people learn about George Allen the more they don't like him, the more they learn about Webb, the more they like him." A lot of us,myself included and maybe some who will read this,gravitated to the Webb campaign because we really hated Allen.
What we need for a VP is an old master. Ed Rendell maybe, comes from an industrial swing state region, that Obama lost, to Rendell's friend, Hillary Clinton. Anyhow.
This is a blast from a Pat Schroederite still itching to rumble over a cultural skirmish that was settled a long time ago. Women in the military - over and done.
Isn't progress all about change? Isn't the very basis of liberal ideology that human beings are capable of change?
Jim Webb is man enough (sexist turn-of-phrase intentional) to have acknowledged he was wrong, enthusiastically embraced opening up billets to women as Secretary of the Navy and, most recently, has been given top ratings by NARAL and other women's issues organizations.
That Kathy G. won't let go says more about her than Jim Webb.
The most critical war we're fighting is not in Iraq or Afghanistan, but the struggle to wrest our country away from the ignorant losers and hypocritical plunderers of the right who've ripped a hole in the ship of state. We're sinking. Fast.
Defeating them requires a certain degree of ruthlessness.
So let's be ruthless. Would an Obama/Webb ticket send women into the voting booth to cast a ballot for John McCain? The next president will shape a Supreme Court that will last for decades.
This election is going to be won by electoral votes in a handful of key swing states that are not way left or way right. And the election changing demographic bump in those swing states is centrist white men. That's where an Obama/Webb ticket trumps every other conceivable combination.
http://matthewyglesias.theatla...
Per some of these posters, Jim Webb is a hot-headed, baggage carrying, woman hating, rug wearing (!?), war pornographer, a bantam rooster party switcher, an irredeemable Prussian, a sexist on his third marriage to a young and pliant Vietnamese wife, very right wing, too far right, a very loose cannon, hopeless on the campaign trail, a buffoon, a Scots-Irishman who would offend Pennsylvania Irish Catholics, a promoter of the New World Order groomed by Kabbalists, a pro-Vietnam War dead-ender, a faux Appalachian, a xenophobic writer of viciously anti-Arab movie scripts, a Republican in mufti, and whose selection as Obama's VP running mate would constitute a slap in the face to Clinton supporters.
As for his skills as a campaigner, there is something about the 2006 election and "macaca" that people fail to understand. Outside Virginia, the world looks at that as a horrible gaffe that cost Allen votes. Maybe it brought him derision from the media and much of the progressive community, but in much of Virginia it probably had less effect than people give it credit for. It was not simply a case of Allen losing that election; Webb also won it.
As for the comments, they were too inane and I had to stop reading. j - you are a more tolerant person than I.
As to dredging up Webb's initial resistance to women at the service academies, there are still some unresolved issues awaiting the next administration, like opening up all the MOS's to women. That makes no sense at all. But given a 360 degree battlefiled, the present system is arbitary and awkward. And then there's the pc thing, pushed in the "Ixnay on the Ebbway" blog by the Pat Schroederite Kathy G.
Women now fly combat aircraft in combat and it appears to be working fine. It may be because there aren't separate qualifying standards for women fighter pilots. As to physical logistics, most fixed wing pilots are officers and officer billets don't present the problems inherent in physically integrating women into, say, ground combat units.
Though individual women serving in support units have found themselves caught up in violent combat in Iraq, and some have performed heroically, it's ridiculous to even contemplate opening combat infantry and armor MOS's in the Army and Marine Corps to women. Some have said that if a woman were capable of meeting the same strength and endurance levels required of men, they should be allowed to serve in, say, the infantry. But that begs so many questions, it's really an unsolvable Gordian knot.
I'm just trying to think of ways in which Jim Webb could 'own' the Vice Presidency.
Second, the VP is certainly not a member of the Senate.
So, the question would be whether the Senate Rules allow for the appointment of non-Senators to committees.
The rules do not, as far as I could tell, allow that. The rules make clear, at least with respect to standing committees, that they shall be comprised of Senators.
Here is the rule:
http://rules.senate.gov/senate...
That all said, this was just some hasty research, and could be wrong.
What Jim Webb Is Worth to Obama
by Steve Kornacki | MAY 28, 2008... Of all of Obama's possible choices, Webb may represent the strongest mix of value and plausibility.
Start with his value, which, at least on paper, eclipses virtually any other contender. No pick could do more than Webb to reassure the country when the G.O.P. starts bludgeoning Obama with its national security attacks. To grasp the authority that Webb would bring to the ticket, just consider McCain's attack on Obama over the weekend for his lack of military service. Webb, a no-nonsense Vietnam combat veteran and former Secretary of the Navy (under a Republican president, no less), would help immunize Obama against such an attack and would be able to throw the charge back in McCain's face.
Webb, with his patriotic life-story and maverick's swagger, would be a near-perfect antidote to McCain, providing immeasurable reassurance to swing voters who are inclined to throw the Republicans out of the White House but tempted by McCain's reputation for integrity. With Webb on the ticket, it would be much tougher for McCain to convince Americans that Obama's foreign policy prescriptions are the product of inexperience and naiveté.
... 2006 was Webb's first venture into elected politics. He's a stronger speaker now and better on television. And in a national campaign, what seemed dull in '06 might instead register as sober, responsible and reassuring. And, really, when the Republicans start calling him a weakling and a lightweight, is there anyone Obama would rather have by his side than Jim Webb?
(Man, for Webb aficionados, these are good times. Kinda like -- and this is somehow synchronistic -- these are good times to be a beer drinker.)
... Webb, an idiosyncratic, free-thinking, independent-minded politician, is being pushed for a position that steamrolls those qualities. Worse, he's being pushed for the position because people love what an idiosyncratic, free-thinking, independent-minded politician he is. It's like celebrating a former alcoholic's sobriety by taking him out for a drink.It's all the more frustrating because Webb is arguably the most exciting and meaningful politician the party has seen in decades. His understanding of the military is the equal of anyone in the party, and his visceral connection to the institution dwarfs that of any other major Democratic politician. The section of his book dealing with Middle Eastern affairs is complex, deeply thought-out, and flatly brilliant. His opposition to the war in Iraq is situated in an understanding of America's involvement in the region over the past century. It's not only a deep analysis, it's a confident one. Webb does not fear the subject, and as his Iraq-fueled run for Senate proved, he's anxious to pick the fight.
And he's good at it. His work with the GI Bill has shown legislative skill and an intuitive understanding of the ways in which the current administration's policies have not only shortchanged our veterans but been disrespectful of their sacrifice. Less publicly, his quick action pushing a resolution demanding congressional authorization for military action against Iran showed a tactical fearlessness rare among Democratic politicians.
Moreover, Webb is not only a skilled legislator but a symbolically important politician. He is a tribune of the culturally conservative, fiercely traditionalist, military-oriented slice of the population that found itself disgusted with the Democrats after the Vietnam War. He is a refugee from Nixonland, and his conclusion that the Democratic Party now represents his ideals better than the Republican Party could be a first step toward healing rifts that have bedeviled the party since the 1960s. ...
http://www.prospect.org/cs/art...
Okay, Ezra Klein makes a good point about the normal role of the vice-president being ill suited for an idiosyncratic political figure like Jim Webb.
But -- and this is a very large but -- these are not normal times. A 'dancing with the bear' war (to borrow from you know who -- my own earlier metaphor was dancing with the tar baby) costing trillions with no end in sight, America's reputation in tatters, an economy in recession kept out of depression by the Mint printing money 24/7, a hollowed out manufacturing base, Osama bin Laden on the loose and no doubt planning on testing the new president ...
Abnormal times call for leaders who break the mold. And history has a way, sometimes, if we're lucky -- and smart enough to embrace them -- of producing extraordinary people for extraordinary times. Like Barack Obama ... and Jim Webb.
The point Ezra Klein seems to have forgotten in making his well articulated case is that retaking the White House trumps everything else. And looking at the state-by-state match-up polls, it's not at all clear that Barack Obama is going to prevail over John McCain. Add Jim Webb to the equation and it's a whole new ball game.
And, of course, the current vice-president has pretty much busted the mold. There is now clear precedence for a powerful vice-president with, in effect, his own mandate and even his own constituency. Simply put, there could be no better antidote to Dick Cheney than the great Jim Webb.
Webb for VP!! Get working on it OBAMA!!