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(s)Elections See other (s)Elections Articles Title: Jim Webb, Iron Intellectual By Alec MacGillis Both men, of course, have been mentioned as possible running mates for Obama -- and, in the eyes of the veep-obsessed press, that made the event into an audition of sorts. There's no doubt that Webb is tough. He's stood up to President Bush at a White House reception and has a concealed-carry gun license. But he also sees himself as a serious, free-thinking intellectual. He has a bevy of fairly well-regarded books under his belt and prides himself on writing his own stump material. If yesterday's joint appearance was any indication, far from canceling out Obama's Ivy League pedigree, an Obama-Webb ticket could be one of the most literary pairings ever to take the field. Whereas Kaine served up a fairly conventional Democratic rallying cry, Webb embarked on a meditation on American history and self-conception over the past forty years. He noted that it was the 40th anniversary not only of Bobby Kennedy's assassination but also of his own swearing into the Marine Corps. He took the audience back to that "tumultuous year" -- the assassinations, the Tet offensive, the riots in which "the African American sections in many American cities had erupted with frequent violence" and the Democratic convention in Chicago. Webb said he was giving the history tour "because we all know that the United States of 2008 is also a troubled and divided place in a quiet but equally disturbing way." "The tumult of those earlier years," he went on, "convinced me and others that we needed to learn our love our country more deeply for all its ugly flaws, because it required us to sit back and reconsider the beliefs and values that had once been handed to us as our national legacy. We went through an intellectual challenge in justifying America's uniqueness on fresh grounds and this caused us to believe all the more strongly that ... that this was the moral beacon of the world, that for all or problems we had the will to solve them, the patience to undergo the painful debates that might identify solutions ... and the constitutional system that will provide remedies and thus hold us together as a people." "He is man of great intellect," said Webb. He then drove home the praise by punctuating the final sentence of his introduction with a loud fist pound on the podium.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 105.
#105. To: a vast rightwing conspirator (#0)
Webb is Scots-Irish like me, and of course we are superior over everyone else. Eat your hearts out, hah hah!
#109. To: Turtle (#105)
Not necessarily true. There are "lace" Irish, (me) and then there are "shanty" Irish (turtle). hehehehehe
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