Jim Webb reporting for duty (Obama?)

Certainly Webb is a stronger VP candidate than many. He offers bipartisan reach, given his previous service in the Reagan Administration, national security credentials, given his work as Secretary of the Navy, and also provides a record of military service. He provides a much more viable choice than Clinton, i.e.:

From "Head of State"

http://headofstate.blogspot.com/2008/05/head-of-state-reasons-that-hillary.html

Friday, May 23, 2008

Head of State: The Reasons That Hillary Should Not Be Vice President

Regarding Hillary Clinton as Barack Obama's running mate:

Originally, this seemed to be a potentially plausible choice--and if presented in the following way, could turn her divisive campaign into a potential coup as a VP candidate. The thinking was the following:

Hillary has run a divisive campaign. Now, just as the nation should mend its divisions in favor a greater unity that would serve the greater needs of our country, so now they would explicitly put these divisions behind them, in the interests of the unity that this nation, after a bitter and divisive Administration, is so in need of. This would serve as a powerful and vibrant example of the very ability to unify that Obama both offers and represents.

However, this would require a candidate that was willing to take such a position of relative shared selflessness in the interests of a greater good. While the Vice Presidency certainly offers its honors (now far beyond the "warm pitcher" of John Vance Garner's famous phrase) and positioning for later Presidential aspirations, such a plan would require the ability to think in terms of a shared effort based on the betterment of the nation, rather than in more grasping, combative and singular terms.

The Clinton camp's behavior over this past week has made such a positive scenario clearly untenable, showcasing the same characteristics that have signified her campaign throughout its long, chaotic march--its contradictions of previous statements when such changes have a slight possibility of adding a week or two of vitality, its sudden and implausible use of populist guises and specious historical parallels for transparently opportunistic purposes, its near-hallucinogenic transmogrifications of personality and central bases for further continuation,
and the central campaign tendency to place personal attainment over virtually all values that lay in its path.

These characteristics--self over nation, positioning over a consistent presentation of position, values and even self, the willingness to put personal viability over the need to transcend and transform the vast wreckage of state and international relations that remains at this critical time--are as present now, at a moment when wisdom rather than a remorseless, obdurate desperation could fill this gap, as they have been throughout much of the campaign. They would continue to make themselves present during a Clinton campaign for vice president, complicating, diminishing and often distracting from, in trivial internecine battles, the message of unity and change.

Perhaps Clinton could adopt a more unifying, integrated and less grasping position on the VP subject. However, thus far, the actions of the Clinton camp have made it clear: It's time to clean the slate. Hillary Clinton should not be the Vice Presidential candidate.

Cite:

Head of State

http://headofstate.blogspot.com/2008/05/head-of-state-reasons-that-hillary.html

obama should have a squad of the best people

Stop saying "Clinton." She has no need for a vice presidential nominee. What she needs is an accountant to help her do the delegate math and take care of her massive campaign debt.

If McCain was sooooooooo concerned about this bill, why wasn't he in Washington to vote AGAINST it???

Maybe because he did not want the voters to see how much he stays in step with what George W. Bush tells him.

Even Joe Lieberman voted for it!!!

Just like JohnF kerry who served in Vietnam Jim Webb is reporting for Obama duty.
This guy is a Jumpin Jim Jeffords Benedict Arnold the drivebys can't get enough of GOP jumpers. Jerry White, Springfield, IL

Webb would add some credentials and credibility to a ticket totally bereft of experience and accomplishment, military or otherwise, with Obama as the candidate. In fact, the ticket would be much stronger if Webb were the presidential candidate and Obama in the apprentice position of vice presidential candidate.

Sounds like a Webb Gem to me! Anyone but Mrs. Entitlement! And I mean anyone - like Kermit the Frog!

If you loved Ronald Reagan and Dick Cheney you'll love Jim Webb.

I have said for months now that Jim Webb is my first choice. He is extremely bright.

'From the time I left the Marine Corps after serving as an infantry platoon and company commander in Vietnam, I decided that I would focus on immediate goals that inspired me to devote all of my energy to them, rather than putting together the more cautious and traditional building blocks of a predictable career. I've worked in government, first in the late 1970s when I was the youngest full committee counsel in the Congress, then in the 1980s as a Defense Department official, and now as a senator. I've written nine books, six of them novels, a process that allowed me to spend considerable time overseas and also among widely varying communities here in America as I researched and wrote. I've taught literature at the university level. I've worked on numerous film projects, some of them with Hollywood's top producers and directors. I've traveled widely as a journalist, writing from such locations as Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand. In addition to fighting in Vietnam, I've covered two wars—the Marines in Beirut for PBS in 1983, and then as an embedded journalist in Afghanistan in 2004. I've worked as a business consultant in Asia.

Financially and personally, my life has been one roll of the dice after another. I've had good years and bad years, but I've never lost my willingness to take a risk and I've never been bored. My curiosities have taken me down some pretty strange alleyways, to some of the darker, meaner corners of the world. And in that respect, when it comes to examining many of the issues of the day I have brought to the Senate a different set of experiences, and thus a different referent, from most of my colleagues. At the same time, I will admit that I acquired a certain level of cynicism along the way when it comes to the glitter-and-tinsel side of government and the trappings of power. And coming to the Senate after so many real-world, nonpolitical experiences, I will also admit that this well-honed skepticism is largely intact.

But the one connecting dot in all of my experiences has been a passion for history and a desire to learn from it. Not the enumeration of monarchs and treaties that so often passes for academic knowledge, but the surging vitality from below that so often impels change and truly defines cultures. The novelist Leo Tolstoy wrote vividly about war and peace, showing us the drawing rooms and idiosyncrasies of Russia's elite. But in reality, he was telling us that great societal changes are most often pushed along by tsunami-deep impulses that cause the elites to react far more than they inspire them to lead. And this, in my view, is the greatest lesson of political history. Entrenched aristocracies, however we may want to define them, do not want change; their desire instead is to manage dissent in a way that does not disrupt their control. But over time, under the right system of government, a free, thinking people has the energy and ultimately the power to effect change.

The American experiment, incomplete as it is in its evolution, is the greatest example of the possibility of balancing these two competing impulses. We ebb and flow, decade after decade, as the better minds among us seek to define the playing field of American success. And we are engaging in this debate, as best we can, under the principles of true representative government.

This leads me, perhaps surprisingly, to my innate distrust of the ornaments of power, because even an earned skepticism has its limits. If one has a sense of history and cares for the place of the United States of America as a unique, enduring model of the benefits of democracy, no amount of cynicism can diminish the largeness, and even the greatness, that surrounds you when you walk the hallways and enter the chambers of the Capitol. Indeed, even when viewed from the outside landscape the Capitol dominates Washington, rising with an austere grandness above the skyline, and lit with a glowing majesty at night. The Capitol, quite frankly, humbles me, and for me it is a particular privilege to walk unescorted and unchallenged along its corridors.'

http://mustv.com/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90595861

If you loved Ronald Reagan and Dick Cheney you'll love Jim Webb.

Posted by: Boyz Club? | May 24, 2008 11:09 AM

What a ridiculous statement. I suggest you invest a little time learning about this guy. I'm really impressed with him.

The G.I. bill gave the country a whole bunch of well educated, highly motivated Americans. The result was a period of growth and prosperity for the thirty post war years. A strong G. I. bill will help America compete in the world. Enlistments will increase faster than soldiers leave for education. Those opposing the bill are not our soldiiers friends. McCain should be shamed.