A Halfhearted Effort to Defend Jim Webb

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

JOHN MCCAIN

A lot of readers charge that Jim Webb is now the tenth Democrat to criticize or attack John McCain's war record. But while Webb's comments deserve scrutiny and probably some criticism, they're a different beast than Clark, Rockefeller, Harkin, and the other six.

"I think what we really need to work on over the next four, five months, and it goes back to the speech that Sen. Obama gave [Monday] and this little fight that I've been watching and that is, we need to make sure that we take politics out of service," Webb said. "People don't serve their country for political issues."

He continued: "And John McCain's my long-time friend, if that is one area that I would ask him to calm down on, it`s that, don't be standing up and uttering your political views and implying that all the people in the military support them because they don't, any more than when the Democrats have political issues during the Vietnam War. Let's get the politics out of the military, take care of our military people, or have our political arguments in other areas."

Of course, the "calm down" comment appears to be an attempt to raise McCain's allegedly volcanic temper in a subtle way, but I don't know if the guy who said he wanted to punch out the president and had his aide bring his handgun into the U.S. Capitol building is the right guy to hit the Republican nominee on his temper.

Now, it would help if the man the Economist magazine labeled an "angry potato" would provide an example of McCain "uttering his political views and implying that all the people in the military support them when they don't." Has McCain said that everyone in the military supports the Iraq War? His idea of a "League of Democracies"? Tax cuts? Webb's denounces a comment McCain hasn't made, and in fact I think Webb is the first to accuse McCain of this.

But incoherent, borderline delusional assessments of a member of the opposing party are not, ipso facto, attacking McCain's military service.

Jon Henke, however, notes that Webb has repeatedly touted the importance of military experience in political leaders...

07/02 09:48 AM Share