Saturday, July 18, 2015

Just Curious

I was first introduced to Jim Webb via his 1978 book about the Vietnam war (Fields of Fire). As the saying goes, it resonated with me.

He wrote several other books about the military, war, and politics. I enjoyed some, didn't care for others, but they always were thought-provoking.

Webb went on to have an interesting and varied life in academia and politics.
The highly decorated combat veteran, who led a Marine Corps platoon and company in Vietnam, went on to serve as assistant defense secretary and secretary of the Navy. His other medals include the Navy Cross, the Silver Star and two Bronze Stars. He has also written 10 books (including six novels), taught literature at his alma mater (the United States Naval Academy), won an Emmy Award in 1984 for reporting he did on U.S. Marines in Beirut as a journalist for PBS, and earned a law degree at Georgetown University. 
He is also a former democrat senator from Virginia, and is currently one of the five announced democrat presidential candidates. He strikes me as a person with more integrity than the other candidates (not that that's saying much). As such, he merits a serious look - even if he is a democrat. He seems to be a throwback to what used to be called, without any sense of irony, a conservative democrat.

I don't know much about him, but I'm looking forward to hearing what he has to say as the campaign progresses. I'd also be curious to hear your thoughts - or is it too early...?

6 comments:

Bag Blog said...

That's interesting. I always thought my dad had misplaced views, but he was a conservative democrat. I just called him a yellow dog democrat.

Old NFO said...

He quit as SECNAV when he didn't get is way... Lost all respect for him then...

http://articles.latimes.com/1988-02-23/news/mn-44732_1_navy-secretary

CenTexTim said...

BB - back in the day we had conservative dems and liberal repubs. It seemed that people were more willing to consider the ideas of others, our discourse was more civil, more things got done, and those things were less extreme than what gets done today (for example, obamacare). Yellow dog dems were part of that.

NFO - Don't mean to get into a detailed political discussion, and I'm not as informed on it as you are, but it seems that Webb was standing up for his belief that the Navy's budget should not be cut. Or am I misreading the article?

Well Seasoned Fool said...

Anybody but Shillary.

Anonymous said...

Then we have John (He served in Vietnam) Kerry. Kerry was an asshole from day one.

I think Mr. Webb was a hard charger and conservative early on.

But he succumed to a Liberal academia life later in life and adopted some of the Liberal stew.

Having said that he's still, without a doubt, heads above the other Democrat options.

CenTexTim said...

WSF +1

Toejam - I do worry a little about Webb being another McCain - a legitimate war hero (despite what Donald Trump says) who turned out to be a mediocre (or worse) politician.