WSJ: The Case for Webb as Obama's Running Mate

Link: Political Perceptions : The Case for Webb as Obama's Running Mate.

The excitement among Democrats about James Webb, the senator from Virginia, is understandable. Having a Vietnam-war-hero-turned-Reagan-administration-official-turned-Iraq-War foe on the ticket would lend Barack Obama a stiff dose of military experience, not to mention manly toughness.

But most speculation about Sen. Webb misses just how radical, risky and historic a choice he would be. He’s not some liberal Republican or moderate Democrat a few degrees to the right of the Democratic mainstream. He’s a Vietnam veteran whose driving passion for several decades was contempt for “the Left,” those draft-evading “elites” who came to run the modern Democratic Party.

Democrats have nominated southerners as part of their tickets nine times since 1976 (Jimmy Carter, Lloyd Bentsen, Bill Clinton, Al Gore and John Edwards) and military veterans 11 times (Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, John Kerry, and Messrs. Bentsen, Carter and Gore). They’ve convinced themselves therefore that they have reached out to the Reagan Democrats. But these veterans and southerners were all men who had been on the liberal side of the Vietnam-era culture wars. Not Jim Webb.

Choosing Sen. Webb would either violently reopen old wounds or finally call home the Reagan Democrats.