Webb

Will Hillary run? Should she? What about Warren?

Off to the side of the frenzy is a very interesting potential Democrat candidate: James Webb.

Webb has served as a United States Senator from Virginia, Secretary of the Navy, Assistant Secretary of Defense, congressional staffer, and Marine Corps officer. As a Marine officer he was awarded the Navy Cross. After his medical retirement from the Marine Corps due to injuries received in Viet Nam, Webb enrolled in law school at Georgetown University where he earned a Juris Doctor and received the Horan Award for excellence in legal writing. In the private sector he has been an Emmy-award winning journalist, a filmmaker, and the author of ten books. In addition, he taught literature at the United States Naval Academy and was a Fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics.

He has written analysis, opinion pieces and fiction. Indeed, his fiction writing has caused him some difficulty. In a Senatorial race against Allen in Virginia, a race that Allen expected would take him to a national level for a presidential run, Allen's campaign issued a press release quoting several passages from Webb's novels with sexual content, including graphic references to female anatomy and purported pedophilia, homosexuality and incest. The press release said that the passages showed a "continued pattern of demeaning women". So PETA would picket Melville. (This shameless campaign did not work and Allen, to the astonishment of many, was defeated.)

Politically, he is a mixed bag, a populist and a guns rights advocate. And a cautious warrior with a sharp tongue. He met with President Bush while Webb's son was a Marine serving in Iraq.  "How's your boy?", the President asked. Webb replied "I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President." Bush responded, "That's not what I asked you. How's your boy?" Webb responded, "That's between me and my boy, Mr. President." 

His bluntness and his honesty has always been a liability to him in theory but he has always been popular. In 1979 he wrote an article in the Washingtonian titled "Women Can't Fight" which earned him the enmity of the usual suspects.  And he has some domestic liability: Webb has been married three times. He has four grown children, as well as a young child with his current wife Hong Le, and is stepfather to Le's daughter, Emily, from a previous marriage.

Yet he has a powerful personality, is very smart, painfully honest and a real American patriot. All those qualities are in short supply and would be nice to see in a candidate.