Unlike most modern politicians, Webb hasn't spent his entire adult life running, or plotting to run, for political office. He is a man of unimpeachable physical courage and battlefield heroism, having been awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Star and two Purple Hearts for his service as a Marine in Vietnam.
Pimpslap on Kerry!
Webb may be a novice politician but he's also a natural. He was careful to keep his most conservative leanings well camouflaged during the campaign. He is, for instance, an absolutist on Second Amendment rights -- the right to keep and bear arms -- but he made sure the subject seldom arose as he campaigned in the liberal suburbs of northern Virginia.
He has written extensively about affirmative action, calling it "a permeating state-sponsored racism that is as odious as the Jim Crow laws it sought to countermand." He has praised the Confederate battle flag and the sacrifice of the Confederate soldier with an eloquence that Jefferson Davis might envy.
His revulsion for Bill Clinton and his administration is deep, longstanding and very public. "Every time I see him salute a Marine," he once told an interviewer, "it infuriates me."
National Democrats may not know what to do with him either. Webb's arrival in Washington is being hailed as part of a new wave of moderation and pragmatism sweeping the liberal party.
Yet Webb is neither a moderate nor a pragmatist: He's a radical and a populist. His populism explains, among other things, his disdain for the Clintons. Both Bill and Hillary, he wrote in 2001, embody a "a pervasive elitism, from people who were taught when young that the laws that applied to their countrymen did not necessarily apply to them."
Well Said! Think McCain was a thorn in Repub sides? Wait till he locks horns with Pelosi's San Fran values people. |