Barack Obama will choose the running mate he likes best. Of candidates frequently mentioned in media speculation, I think Jim Webb, the senator from Virginia, is the one I like best. I'm disposed in favor of writers, and Webb is a good one. Writing in the current New York Review, Elizabeth Drew observes:
Webb is a serious writer, not a politician who writes books on the side. His first book, Fields of Fire, published in 1978, when Webb was thirty-two, is a sweeping, unflinching novel about Vietnam featuring two of life's losers who signed up for lack of anything else to do. It conveys with stark vividness, and also a touch of farce, the stench, the filth, the fear, and the bewildering unexpectedness of fighting an elusive enemy in a jungle. Fields of Fire has often been called the best book about Vietnam and likened to the war writing of Norman Mailer and Stephen Crane.
Webb's knowledge of warfare, like Mailer's, comes from firsthand experience. He is a decorated--two Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts, a Silver Star, the Navy Cross--Vietnam combat veteran who, before he left the Republican party and defeated an incumbent Republican, George Allen, in a 2006 Senate campaign, was probably best known for his service as Secretary of the Navy under President Reagan. He was, like Obama, a prescient voice of reason on the invasion of Iraq. On the op-ed page of the Washington Post, he wrote, in September of 2002:
America's best military leaders know that they are accountable to history not only for how they fight wars, but also for how they prevent them. The greatest military victory of our time--bringing an expansionist Soviet Union in from the cold while averting a nuclear holocaust--was accomplished not by an invasion but through decades of intense maneuvering and continuous operations. With respect to the situation in Iraq, they are conscious of two realities that seem to have been lost in the narrow debate about Saddam Hussein himself. The first reality is that wars often have unintended consequences.... The second is that a long-term occupation of Iraq would beyond doubt require an adjustment of force levels elsewhere, and could eventually diminish American influence in other parts of the world.... The issue before us is not simply whether the United States should end the regime of Saddam Hussein, but whether we as a nation are prepared to physically occupy territory in the Middle East for the next 30 to 50 years.... These concerns, and others like them, are the reasons that many with long experience in U.S. national security issues remain unconvinced by the arguments for a unilateral invasion of Iraq.
As events unfolded, skepticism gave way to disgust, and it seems that the federal government's reponse to Katrina was for Webb the final proof of the Republican party's careless ineptitude. The suburbs of Washington, D.C. in northern Virginia are growing rapidly, which is making the whole state somewhat more friendly to the Democratic party. Webb's economic populism and Scotch-Irish heritage positioned him to win votes in the rural, mountain region of southwestern Virginia, and these factors, together with the infamous racial slur that slid off the lips of his opponent, put him over the top by fewer than 10,000 votes.
Virginia was last carried by a Democratic presidential candidate in 1964, but it is widely regarded to be "in play" in 2008. Webb obviously won a statewide race in 2006. Obama easily won the state's Democratic primary, and, according to the most recent polls, is even with or slightly ahead of McCain among likely Virginia voters. The state's thirteen electoral votes would make it possible for Obama to win the White House with neither Florida or Ohio in his column. It is plain that Webb, who has speculated that he is the only person in the history of Virginia with a union card, two Purple Hearts, and three tattoos to win a statewide election, is strong where Obama is weak. He might help Obama win the battlegrounds of Pennsylvania and Ohio in addition to Virginia. If those three are all in his column in November, Obama will be the next president.
There are, as with all prospects, arguments against Webb. Michael Tomasky, who also likes Webb, summarizes the credits and debits here. Finally, as long as we are talking about running mates, I should say, since I'm a Minnesotan, that it is fine with me if McCain taps our governor, Tim Pawlenty, for the second spot on the Republican ticket. My mother likes him, which means that if he were a movie he'd be terrible. It is somewhat surprising to me that he is apparently on McCain's short list. There is no sign that McCain has a chance in Minnesota, and even if he did, it is not clear that Pawlenty would help: in the Republican caucus here last winter, McCain was pasted by Mitt Romney--Mitt Romney!--despite the enthusiastic support of Pawlenty. I guess Pawlenty is handsome, so in that respect he'd balance the ticket.