Webb Feat

The Senate candidate looks awkward --even shy--as a plumpish, middle- age woman crosses the dimly lit rec room filled with members of the Arlington, Virginia, Kiwanis Club to shake his hand. With firm efficiency, Democratic nominee Jim Webb grips the proffered appendage, gives a slight nod, then swiftly retreats into his personal space--until another well-wisher steps forward, necessitating a similar interaction. Grip, nod, retreat. Grip, nod, retreat. After three or four such exchanges, Webb is interrupted by campaign aides, who have promised the waiting TV cameras a few minutes of face time with the candidate. As they escort him away from the lingering Kiwanians, Webb does not appear sorry to go.Watching James H. Webb run to replace Republican George Allen as the junior senator from Virginia, there's no mistaking the first-time candidate for the sort of "career politician" so often derided by voters. A military hero, Reagan- era secretary of the Navy, and author of widely praised war novels, Webb has exactly the kind of CV that makes Republicans (of which he was one until recently) very, very nervous. But, despite a rough-and-tumble background and good-ole-boy roots--Webb's most recent book is a nonfiction look at his Scots- Irish heritage and Appalachian ancestors--he lacks the wisecracking, back- slapping persona generally associated with Southern pols. Friends say he's a great storyteller, but, as a public orator, Webb is neither conversational nor inspirational, imbuing speeches with all the pizzazz of a military briefing. (As Webb laid out his Iraq vision for the Kiwanians, one older gent seated near the dais kept involuntarily resting his eyes.) To Webb's advantage, his ruddy cheeks, feisty red hair (neatly trimmed, of course), and fit (if not exactly towering) physique belie his 60 years. But there is something a little too reserved and guarded about the pale blue eyes, making him seem vaguely ill-at- ease when working a crowd or enduring a press Q&A. Try as he might, confronted with a roomful of strangers--be they voters or potential donors--Webb can't help but look as though he'd rather be bow hunting. Webb's ambivalent stump style is all the more vivid when contrasted with the master glad-handing of his opponent, Senator George Allen. Quick with a joke and an easy grin, Allen has spent over two decades honing his goodole-boy shtick--not to mention his fund-raising talents--to the point where he was, until recently, seen as a shoo-in for reelection and a serious presidential contender for 2008. Then came Macaca-gate, a historically idiotic blunder in which, at a lily-white rally in southwest Virginia, Allen singled out a Webb campaign volunteer of Indian descent for ridicule, twice calling the young man "Macaca"--a term that, in certain Francophone countries (including Tunisia, from which Allen's mother hails), is a derogatory epithet for dark-skinned folk. Thanks to botched damage-control by Team Allen, the flub quickly became national news, the senator's poll numbers began sinking, and Virginians suddenly had themselves a real race. In a high-stakes election year that has Democrats dreaming about the six-seat gain needed to retake the Senate, Virginia voters--and candidate Webb--are increasingly being sized up for their potential to deliver that magical margin of victory. To succeed, Webb will need more than an impressive backstory and an embattled opponent. For starters, the campaign needs money--and lots of it. Webb's name recognition in the state is still low, and, with less than half a million dollars on hand, he lacks the wherewithal to properly introduce himself through paid media. (Allen, by contrast, has more than $6 million--out of $12 million raised so far--with which to bury Webb in ads in the post-Labor Day homestretch.) But just as vexing as the money gap, Webb must contend with the electorate's enduring obsession with "authentic" politicians. By most measures, Webb is precisely the sort of candidate people claim to want, especially in times of uncertainty: a straight-shooting, decisive war hero with a reputation for acting (at times even overreacting) on principle, who is so incapable of artifice and of kowtowing to special interests that he can't bring himself to grovel, even in the vital quest for campaign cash. Allen, meanwhile, is the product of a wealthy, suburban upbringing, a "career politician," who, for all his swagger and tough talk, never served in the military. The irony is that, so far, Webb's genuine authenticity has been trumped by Allen's faux version: the cowboy boots, dipping tobacco, and Confederate nostalgia from which the senator, a California native, has constructed his down-home persona. In the end, the Virginia Senate race may come down to a question of just how much authenticity voters really want. On paper, Jim Webb is a Democratic dream candidate. He is a social moderate, an economic populist, and, most important, a harsh critic of the Iraq war. Indeed, the administration's mismanagement of Iraq outraged him so badly that it actually prompted his defection from the GOP. Unlike, say, John Kerry, Webb has a military record that defies "swift-boating"--featuring two Purple Hearts, one Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and a Navy Cross--and an upbringing macho enough to make George Allen drool with envy. While his parents both hailed from the South, Webb was a military brat who bumped from base to base (and even country to country) growing up. In the Webb family, boys were bred to appreciate the fine arts of hunting, fishing, and fisticuffs. In Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, Webb recalls the rites of passage of his childhood--the bait-casting, the coon-hunting, the street-brawling-- affectionately dubbing the process "the Redneck Bar Mitzvah." After high school, Webb spent a year in nrotc at the University of Southern California before transferring to the Naval Academy. Graduating in 1968, he took a commission with the Marines and soon thereafter headed for Vietnam. In his 1995 book, The Nightingale's Song, Robert Timberg notes that, during one two-month period in 1969, 56 men in Webb's platoon were killed or wounded, including some of his closest friends. Nor did Webb himself escape unscathed. One day in July 1969, Webb was out clearing spider holes with comrade Mac McDowell when a Viet Cong sprang up and lobbed a grenade at the pair. Webb shot the enemy soldier, shoved McDowell to the ground, and threw himself between his friend and the grenade. Thirty-seven years later, Webb still carries pieces of the shrapnel in a kidney and at the base of his skull. The incident earned him a Navy Cross, the Armed Forces' second-highest combat medal. It also ended his military career. Anxious to return to the field, Webb cut short treatment on a knee wound and tried to ignore the subsequent infection. (Recounts Timberg, "One morning he squatted down to make coffee and the wound burst open. A clot of pus and dead skin the size of a tennis ball blew out of his knee. He had the battalion surgeon clean it up and give him a shot of penicillin, then returned to his platoon.") The infection spread, eventually wreaking so much damage that, despite two years of grueling rehabilitation, Webb was ruled incapable of ever again leading troops. Faced with the prospect of life behind a desk, he resigned in 1972 and decided to try his hand at law. As a first-year law student at Georgetown, Webb suffered massive culture shock as, for the first time, he found himself surrounded by civilians who considered military service dishonorable. Looking to put a human face on the war, Webb began writing his first novel, Fields of Fire. A grim tale of one platoon's experience in Vietnam, the book became a critically acclaimed best- seller, and it is still considered a classic war novel. More books followed, along with forays into journalism--both with a focus on military matters. Perhaps most notably, on October 14, 1983, Webb broadcast a report for pbs's "MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour" from Beirut, where American troops were charged with helping the Lebanese fend off Syrian forces. Still stinging from the betrayals of Vietnam (to this day Webb considers the U.S. pullout a disgrace), Webb feared a similarly fuzzy mission--and disastrous outcome--in Lebanon. He closed his report with the admonition: "These men are trusting their very lives to the wisdom of our leaders. Our government's obligation to them, which was too frequently betrayed in Vietnam, is to proceed with a clarity of purpose that matches their own trust and commitment." The report won Webb an Emmy. More enduring, however, was the foreign policy lesson he took away from Beirut: "Never get involved in a five-sided argument that's been going on for 2,000 years." Between writing and reporting, Webb periodically returned to the public sector. Though he was raised a Democrat, his disgust with the party's attitude toward the Vietnam war, and U.S. power more broadly, prompted him to change teams following Jimmy Carter's election in 1976. In 1977, the Republicans recruited him to serve as counsel to the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs. From 1984 to 1987, President Reagan appointed him to be the first assistant secretary of defense for reserve affairs. And, in April 1987, Webb was sworn in as secretary of the Navy--only to resign ten months later in protest of planned fleet cuts (a move either principled, petulant, or both, depending on whom you ask). Through it all, Webb has remained resolute in his position that U.S. forces must be deployed with the greatest care. And it is this belief, and the sense that the Bush administration is misusing the military, that prompted Webb to come back to the Democratic Party and run for Senate. Though Webb resists being labeled a one-issue candidate--"We're also pushing hard on economic fairness and social issues," he stresses in a phone interview-- he admits to having become an anti-Iraq-war candidate "almost by default." Indeed, well before declaring his candidacy, Webb was hawking a plan for extricating the United States from Iraq that calls for, among other measures, publicly clarifying our long-term military intentions there, halting work on the permanent bases currently under construction, and temporarily redeploying forces to neighboring countries, such as Jordan and Kuwait. It's a plan, he says, that most voters regard as sensible--certainly in contrast to the current morass, which, he likes to point out, Senator Allen continues to support wholeheartedly. Whatever the merits of Webb's plan, most Virginians may never hear of it. He won the Democratic primary over a much better-funded opponent, thanks to clever voter targeting, endorsements by party players like Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (dscc) Chairman Chuck Schumer, and a grassroots drive by bloggers. (Webb informs me with pride that his campaign didn't run a single ad during the primary.) But taking down an equally anonymous, equally charisma- challenged primary opponent was one thing. Unseating a well-known, famously schmooze-happy incumbent Republican, in what is still a red-leaning state, is quite another. Even without ads, the Webb campaign, as its political guru Steve Jarding notes, "came out of the primary broke." And, with Labor Day looming, it faces being outspent some ten to one by Team Allen. Unfortunately for Team Webb, so many of the traits that make its candidate so appealing in theory--his seriousness, his lack of artifice, his self-reliance, his distaste for schmoozing, and his much acclaimed integrity--in practice make him a problematic campaigner and a downright lousy fund-raiser. University of Virginia political scientist and pundit Larry Sabato calls Webb's campaign style "diffident." At campaign events, Webb supporters seem more intellectually impressed than energized or inspired, and some express outright disappointment. "I'm not confident in his political style, and he's certainly not a charismatic speaker," notes one skeptical gentleman at an event in Charlottesville. Even the candidate's friends admit he doesn't come across as the happiest of political warriors. "I think the best advice Jim got in his entire campaign came from me," says former Senator Bob Kerrey, who became friends with Webb on a joint trip to Vietnam in the early '90s. "I told him, `Just force yourself to smile.' He gives the impression of not being very friendly, because he's got this very serious look on his face." Campaigning is an acquired taste for most people, Kerrey adds, "It takes time to get over the discomfort of interrupting somebody's lunch, when they're having a conversation, to have to walk over and say, `Hi, I'm Jim Webb.'" Worse still is the feeling of being a supplicant, says the campaign veteran. "You have to ask people for help, which is something that oftentimes doesn't come naturally to human beings- -especially men." It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that the word on the street has long been that Webb can be an arrogant mule. (As Timberg writes, "Webb, it is said, can be mean, vindictive, self-important, and overbearing. Such criticism is not confined solely to critics.") The dscc, say observers, has not been impressed with the ex-Marine's stubbornly lackluster campaign style and, most specifically, its impact on his cash flow. This is presumed to be one of the reasons the party was so slow to focus its attention--and its check-writing--on the campaign. But, post-Macaca, everyone is giving the race a second look, holding their breath and waiting to see if Allen's poll numbers stay weak and the bump in attention translates into a bump in Webb's fund-raising. (One small but hopeful sign: During the week of August 20, Webb bagged far more new donations than any other candidate in the "netroots fund-raising push" on the liberal website ActBlue.) According to Jarding, the campaign's fund-raising has tripled, a re- energized blogosphere is "going crazy," and the national Dems have promoted Webb from number 8 to number 6 on their list of "hopeful" races. Though he declined to discuss amounts, Jarding assured me that "the dscc has committed to begin writing checks." In the meantime, Webb's supporters are hard at work spinning his stylistic negatives into positives, deriding George Allen as a slick-talking phony, and pitching Webb as the genuine article. "People are tired of politicians," insists Webb's long-time literary agent, Pete Donaldson. Webb, by contrast, is "real. He has integrity." "If he seems uncomfortable, part of the reason is that part of what you have to do when campaigning is to change a little bit," says Kerrey, adding that the idea of changing anything he says or does to meet other people's expectations is foreign to Webb. "He is," concludes the former senator, "authentic." But, in Webb's case, authentic too often can mean authentically stubborn, stiff, or just plain boring. In early August, at a stop on Webb's "kitchen table" listening tour, a half-dozen voters milled around Dawn and Keith Bradshaw's modest Charlottesville home, snacking on oversized cookies and patiently awaiting the candidate. When Webb at last appeared, half an hour late, he hovered briefly at the edge of the gathering, as if loath to break up the party. Then, offering a brief apology, he did a round of hellos (grip, nod, retreat) and quickly moved to get the official discussion underway. No idle chit-chat. No casual one-on-one with the hostess or the guests. Just wham, bam, let's get down to business. Which, when you think about it, is how a serious, committed, no-nonsense, "authentic" leader probably should behave in such situations. Unless, of course, he is hoping to win an election.