Friday, June 02, 2006
Friday Morning Linkage
War experience central to Jim Webb's campaign
That's the headline on the Virginian Pilot" story about Webb's campaign to become the Democrat running against George Allen for the job of Senator from Virginia. A decade ago, I would have been aghast at seeing Webb run as a Democrat. What I knew about him was mostly what I heard from my daughter, then at Annapolis, who described him as a lousy writer and a male chauvinist boar who railed against the admission of women to the Naval Academy. Now I'm supporting Webb against Harris Miller. Why? A few bits from the story pick up the themes.
Asked why he spent a quarter century as a Republican and has now switched party, Webb mentions Vietnam.
+óGé¼+ôA lot happened to me there,+óGé¼-¥ he said last week, +óGé¼+ôand Vietnam is very central to me in that respect.+óGé¼-¥
Before the war, Webb said, +óGé¼+ôI always identified myself with the working-class elements of the Democratic Party.+óGé¼-¥ His grandparents, who were Arkansas sharecroppers, extolled Franklin Roosevelt, Webb recalled.
Webb's war experience led first to his break with the Democrats; he couldn't stomach Jimmy Carter's amnesty for draft dodgers. But it also explains his break with the Republicans.
Webb says he broke with Republicans over the war in Iraq. In September 2002 +óGé¼GÇ£ half a year before the U.S. invasion +óGé¼GÇ£ Webb wrote a commentary for the Washington Post warning that war with Iraq would not diminish terrorism and would lead to a long and costly occupation of the nation.
+óGé¼+ôWe only belong in that region in the sense that it affects our national interests,+óGé¼-¥ Webb said in a recent interview. +óGé¼+ôOpen sea lanes? Yeah. Terrorist cells? Yeah. Decapitating a government and taking over a country? No.+óGé¼-¥
Webb says his reunification with Democrats came while he was researching his latest book, +óGé¼+ôBorn Fighting,+óGé¼-¥ published in 2004. The non fiction work traces how the Scots-Irish influenced America. Their working-class, Southern heritage and identification with populist Democrats such as Andrew Jackson spoke loudly to Webb.
+óGé¼+ôI realized that the best answers to the problems of this country come from a Democratic Party that goes back to its roots of being the spokesmen for those who have no voice,+óGé¼-¥ he said. +óGé¼+ôWin or lose this year, that+óGé¼Gäós where I am.+óGé¼-¥
Damn, that sounds good to me. (Maybe it's because I recently read David McCulloch's Truman and revisited my own Scotch-Irish roots.)
posted by John 7:03 AM Comments (2) | Trackback