Getting to Know Jim Webb

By Joe Klein

I know what you're thinking: Klein is going to speculate about, or endorse, the increasingly popular idea that Virginia Senator Jim Webb should be Barack Obama's running mate. Sorry, but no. That sort of speculation is usually a waste of time. It is what political reporters do instead of reporting during the dead weeks after the primaries. Anyway, there is more important Webb-related business to be transacted now. He has written a book, A Time to Fight, that may be the best evocation of the 21st century Democratic Party's emerging style and philosophy. In the process, the Senator bids a not-too-fond adieu to the hapless late-20th century Democrats -- at least those who made "interest-group rights" a higher priority than the economic well-being of the middle class ... and especially those who disdained or didn't take time to understand the U.S. military.

Webb is a natural-born provocateur and a human harbinger. His political journey predicted the switch of working-class white people to the Republicans 30 years ago, and in 2006 he became the first prominent Republican -- he served as Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan -- to switch to the Democrats and run for high office, and win. He is also a terrific writer, of both fiction and fact. His preceding nonfiction book, about his Scots-Irish ancestors, was called Born Fighting, and I imagine if there's a sequel to A Time to Fight, it will be called The Fight Goes On, followed by a memoir, Retired but Still Pugnacious. Amid this nonstop bellicosity, there lurks a subtle and acute, if perpetually impolitic, politician. Since his election to the Senate, Webb has done two things I didn't think possible. In 2007 he gave an official response to the State of the Union speech that was not only worth watching but also more interesting than President Bush's turgid offering. And now he has written a policy book that is actually worth reading, an unprecedented feat for a sitting politician.

Webb takes some politically risky turns in A Time to Fight, especially his chapter on the foolishness of mandatory drug-sentencing laws. He also takes a well-calibrated, if expected, swing at the Bush Administration's naive neoconservative foreign policy -- after all, Webb opposed going to war in Iraq in a 2002 Washington Post Op-Ed piece. But he is best on matters of immediate concern to his personal tribes, the military and the Scots-Irish working class. "The ultimate question," Webb writes about Democrats and the military, "is this: When you look at a veteran, what do you see? Do you see a strong individual who overcame the most difficult challenges most human beings can face ... or do you see a victim?" But if some Democrats tend to pity members of the armed forces, the Republican Party "continually seeks to politicize military service for its own ends even as it uses their sacrifices as a political shield against criticism for its failed policies. And in that sense, it is now the Republican Party that most glaringly does not understand the true nature of military service."

Although the military still doesn't trust Democrats, the careless and incompetent use of the troops in Iraq by the Bush Administration has caused a pervasive sense of disgust in the ranks, which may be why, Webb writes, a majority of the veterans running for Congress in 2006 did so as Democrats. In 2008 there are real opportunities for Democrats to gain the trust and support of military families, but only if they make a more sophisticated effort to celebrate the service the troops perform. Webb has led them along that path by proposing a GI bill that some Republicans, including John McCain, have opposed -- much to McCain's political discomfort -- because they think it's too generous. Obama should take the next step by launching a major campaign to encourage young people, especially college graduates, to join the military.

Webb is an avatar of the Democrats' new populism, a theme that has had great resonance on the campaign trail this year. There is some danger here. Populism too often devolves into snake oil: nativism, isolationism and protectionism -- none of which are viable positions in a global economy. But we have seen an unprecedented period of untrammeled wealth accumulation in this country, and Webb makes a convincing pitch that the fabric of society is being shredded by greed. "It is not class warfare ... to point out that economic inequities persist," he writes. "In fact, the reverse is true: it is class warfare from the top down to pretend that such inequities don't matter."

Webb's world is an eclectic concoction -- move to the right by neutralizing the Republican advantage on military issues; move to the left by sending the pendulum back in the direction of economic equity; move to the center by replacing an ideological foreign policy with enlightened pragmatism. These are important insights -- and far too zesty, I'd guess, to be vice presidential.