Jim Webb’s Long War With His Own Party

[DonViejo]

Jeff Greenfield

The short history of a Democratic presidential hopeful’s decades-long fight with his party’s base about Vietnam.

Jim Webb just may be the most unusual, compelling presidential candidate around: he’s a much-decorated Vietnam combat veteran whose heroics make Hollywood war heroes pale by comparison. In an era of ghost written Tweets, he’s an acclaimed novelist, screenwriter, and journalist. He was Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of the Navy whose early, prescient opposition to the Iraq War brought him back to the Democratic Party—where his views on guns, the environment, southern culture, and affirmative action are not exactly in synch with his party’s base.

But there’s a far more fundamental sense in which Webb stands in startling contrast to the root assumptions of Democrats about an issue that divided (and then shaped) his party for almost half a century: the Vietnam War. What Webb believes about that war, and specifically about those who opposed it, still makes him an apostate, if not a heretic, in the party whose presidential nomination he now seeks.

With the exception of race, no question split the Democratic Party more than Vietnam. In 1968, it helped drive the incumbent Democrat to abandon a re-election fight, and left the convention a shambles. By 1972, anti-war activists had rewritten the nominating rules and got one of their own, George McGovern, as the nominee. This led the more hawkish elements of the party (including organized labor) to withhold support, and, over time, turned neo-conservative Democrats into Republicans.

Jimmy Carter unconditionally pardoned all Vietnam draft evaders and resisters on his first day in office. And the fight at home over the war served as the incubator for the next generation of Democratic leaders. Bill Clinton’s youthful experiences as a protester and with the draft were significant campaign issues. John Kerry came to prominence as a combat veteran who denounced the war at a Senate hearing; those denunciations, in turn, triggered the “Swift Boat” ads that wounded him politically in 2004. For the last several decades, the consensus view among Democrats is that the Vietnam War was a mistake, and that the protests and liberal Congressional opposition helped bring an end to a tragedy.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/15/jim-webb-s-long-war-with-his-own-party.html