He Man

[ourbluenation]

An angry man catches America’s mood

Andrew Sullivan

For the past six years, every state of the union speech by George W Bush has been followed by a Democratic response so lame and anaemic I found myself instantly reaching for the remote control. The pale hues and dulcet tones of testosterone-free Democrats served only to highlight the red meat — served rare — of Bush’s war addresses. But not last Tuesday. Not even close. For the first time in his presidency, Bush was out-machoed and outperformed. And the man who did it, the new senator for Virginia, James Webb, tells you a lot about the shifting landscape of American politics in the twilight of the Bush years.

snip

His son is currently serving in Iraq as a marine — and Webb wears his son’s combat boots in the Capitol. Webb is a Jacksonian Southerner, a man whose family originally came from Ulster and settled in the American South.

Webb is also an intellectual and writer, with six raw, steamy novels to his name, a couple of screenplays and a 2004 book called Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America. No dove, he told NBC last November: “I’m one of these people — there aren’t many of us — who can still justify for you the reasons that we went into Vietnam, however screwed up the strategy got.”

Webb isn’t scared of anyone, even the president. In an incident at a White House Christmas party last December, he refused to go along with the president’s seasonal cheer. “How’s your boy?” the president asked him, genially. “I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr President,” Webb testily responded. Bush countered: “That’s not what I asked you. How’s your boy?” Webb came back: “That’s between me and my boy, Mr President.”


snip

In retrospect, Webb’s razor-slim victory in Virginia was perhaps the leading example of how that change has begun to transform American politics. Webb ran against the quintessence of Republican success in the past two decades: George Allen, frat-boy flunkey of the religious right, adept at all the usual tricks in the Karl Rove playbook — subtle demonisation of racial minorities, unsubtle demonisation of gays, smear tactics against his opponent if necessary, and unquestioned support for an infallible commander-in-chief. Webb beat Allen by a fraction of a percentage point. Today, he’d win by a much larger margin.

So, I think, would the Democrats. They’re serious again. Their choice of Webb proved it. Yes, they have the first woman Speaker in American history. But they gave the response to a navy man from the South. They know what they’re doing. Which is more than can currently be said for the White House.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2568465,00.html

[fooj]

1. "They know what they are doing."

:applause: