Promoted by Steven D. Questions: Would Webb really be an anti-war candidate? What’s your reaction to him as a potential candidate to oppose Hilary Clinton and/or Joe Biden?
From politicalwire :
Former Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) said he was seriously considering running for president on an anti-war platform, The Hill reports.
Said Webb: “I have strong reasons for being a Democrat. Basically if you want true fairness in society you want to give a voice in the corridors of power for the people who otherwise would not have it, I believe that will come from the Democratic Party and we’re taking a hard look, and we’ll get back to you in a few months.”
What is good about Webb is very good, and what is bad, is well…
Webb is the populist Democrat incarnate in some ways. I heard him give a speech in NH at the Jefferson/Jackson dinner in ’07. He went on for some time, and quite persuasively, about the disaster that was Iraq. He then talked at some length about the incarceration of young African American men, and the disaster that is drug sentencing.
He was against the Iraq War from the beginning, and even more than Bernie Sanders he is skeptical of US intervention in the Middle East. He is instinctively populist. There are downsides – as those familiar with his record can attest.
His entry would be interesting to say the least. We need an anti-War Democrat.
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Webb would be good because of the points you make that he is taken “seriously” by the media and would force some good non-hawk behavior on other candidates even if he didn’t run for long.
No, Webb would never be an anti-war candidate. I’m not sure if anyone who has been trained for warfare can ever be. As long as there is nationalism, there is always a “rationale” to make a war a just war, if only in the short term.
against the Iraq War. I am old enough – barely – to remember that McGovern in ’72 was an anti-war candidate, and a veteran of World War 2.
In 1972, George McGovern was fifty years old. He had served four years in the US House and ten in the US Senate. He’d supported and worked for Democratic candidates before running for office himself. He wasn’t merely anti-war but pro-peace.
The most qualified DEM POTUS nominee since FDR with integrity as well. But Americans (including the DINO wing of the DEM Party) overwhelmingly preferred the drunk, venal Nixon and his creepy henchmen. It’s been Nixonlandia ever since.
Yes generally anti-war and pro-peace, but not enough to not want to serve as a bomber pilot in Europe in WW2, and not enough to prevent him from voting for Lyndon’s blank-check Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964.
Still, he was my first vote, just barely making 18 to be legal, and one I don’t regret. But a lousy candidate lets don’t forget. The election was over in July after he dumped Eagleton.
Btw, the DINO wing of the party: perhaps its head was Lyndon Johnson. He gave George such a tepid endorsement that the message was loud and clear: the conservative non-antiwar wing didn’t want him. LBJ’s former top aide John Connally iirc ended up organizing Democrats for Nixon that year.
As Connally was appointed Nixon’s Sec Treasury in 1971 and urged Nixon to find a spot for GHWB, odd that any Democrat would have listened to anything he had to say in 1972. Everybody knew that LBJ was only months away from his death — a reason why “Reelect THE President” resonated in 1972, all the former Presidents would be dead when Nixon began his second term.
What would Nixon have done after he’d chosen Agnew in 1968 or 1972 evidence of Agnew’s bribe taking and tax evasion had been reported? Eagleton hadn’t been honest with McGovern and not until much later was it revealed that he had been the source for “The people don’t know McGovern is for amnesty, abortion, and legalization of pot. Once middle America — Catholic middle America, in particular — finds this out, he’s dead.” With Democratic friends like that, McGovern didn’t need any enemies. Not that CREEP and the dirty tricks team weren’t working overtime that year as well.
But in a democracy it’s the voters and not the political parties that elect a President. A shame American voters generally prefer the creeps and ethically challenged to the decent, intelligent, experienced, and able.
Dunno if it was that well known about LBJs health, but we’re you trying to suggest he wasn’t quite in his right mind? Actually he favored Nelson Rockyfeller in the 68 primaries, then it was hinted that he might have preferred a Nixon victory over his own VP on accounta he thought Dick wouldn’t embarrass him over VN.
Lyndon was hardly a hardcore Dem Party loyalist (tho he was a hardcore Johnson loyalist), let alone a liberal , someone iow who could easily and comfortably embrace McGs overall liberal philosophy.
As for Eagleton, sounds like he was paying back George for the latter’s disloyalty. Yes the Eag failed to disclose, but McG shd have toughed it out, made a virtue out of the senator’s full recovery and ability to ably rep his state in the US Senate for many years w/o a hint of mental disability.
Only meant that LBJ wasn’t a major player in the DEM party in 1972 and it was widely known that he was very ill. He never preferred a ’68 Nixon victory over HHH and was furious that Kissinger had interfered in securing a peace agreement with N. Vietnam in ’68. However, when he was urging Rockefeller to run for the GOP nomination (recall that Nelson had supported LBJ in the ’64 general election and they did like each other), HHH wasn’t the nominee and odds were that RFK would be. Not a secret that LBJ and RFK loathed each other. (Difficult to recall that on social and economic issues, there wasn’t all that much that separated a liberal Republican from a liberal Democrat back then.)
Eagleton’s made his comment about McGovern to Novak in April 1972 before McGovern had secured the nomination and selected him for VP. McGovern didn’t immediately drop Eagleton when it was reported that he had undergone ECT treatment. He first consulted with psych professionals. He gave Eagleton far more consideration than I would have. Nobody, including the professionals, could have predicted that Eagleton wouldn’t go the way of Frank Wisner. At that time, more voters would have rejected McGovern because of Eagleton than rejected McCain because of Palin.
Not going to excuse McGovern’s failure to attract a compatible VP nominee. He totally blew it in expecting one of the top names to accept the offer and none were particularly good fits for him anyway. And not the least bit creative. (Not that Gore or Kerry did any better on those scores.) A recollection from Frank Mankiewizc, it could have been a McGovern-Cronkite ticket.
Well McG was stuck with Eag and probably the wiser thing to do would have been tough it out and make Eag into the Great American Comeback Story. (Yes, upon googling later, I see that Eag made those remarks off the record to Novak early on — all the more reason why the McG campaign needed one or two aides carefully vetting people weeks before the convention, a major oversight.)
As for Lyndon, he was furious at his VP for daring to create just a little distance between himself and the Johnson war policy, and hadn’t trusted him since early 65 when Hubert wrote Johnson a long memo detailing why going into VN Wd be a huge mistake. After that, LBJ arranged to have Hubert’s VP office bugged. He preferred Nixon, it’s been speculated , as the candidate less likely to make him look bad over VN.
As for RFK, Johnson seems to have been of the view that, somehow, RFK wd not be the nominee– at least judging by his cryptic remarks (finger across the throat) to Sen McCarthy visiting the Oval around April of that year.
Review — 1968.
3/12 NH primary: Johnson 49% and McCarthy 42% (Not that the NH primary had ever before had any weight)
3/16 RFK enters the race.
3/31 LBJ withdraws and declines to run.
4/12 WI primary: McCarthy 56% LBJ 35%
4/27 HHH enters the race.
McC and RFK ran in the next few primaries, each winning some. HHH collected delegates in “smoke filled back rooms.”
5/10 Paris peace talks first meeting
6/4 CA primary: RFK 46% McC 42% (HHH had more delegates at this point, but the NY primary was next up)
Not surprising that LBJ didn’t see RFK as the nominee in April as that was the DEM Party insider CW. “On the street” it was a contest between McC and RFK. Had RFK lived, the Chicago convention might have been even more explosive than it was with the insiders shoving an HHH nominee on us. Publicly there was no daylight between LBJ and HHH on the Vietnam War. A nominee that hadn’t entered, much less won, a single primary election. (There was probably as much bad blood between the McC and RFK camps as there was between LBJ and RFK.)
How exactly was Nixon going to make LBJ look better wrt Vietnam than HHH would have? Hadn’t worked for Truman. Why halt the bombing on 10/31 if he secretly wanted Nixon to win? Or was furious that Kissinger had sabotaged the peace talks? Sorry, the LBJ in the Nixon camp story is at odds with LBJ’s behavior.
Yes, I’m familiar w/ the chronology. But don’t see any clear insider CW as of April of that year. How could there be? Lyndon had just dropped out, Bobby and McC would fight it out, and Hubert wd enter only later in the month. RFK was a major force entering the race, and was seen as likely to take away McC’s antiwar momentum, which is indeed what happened.
No, the Lyndon slitting the throat gesture, to me, suggests he thought or knew that RFK wouldn’t make it to the end either of the nomination process or the election. And if he meant only to convey the insider CW or his mere political opinion of Bobby’s chances, it seems a curiously strong and violent way of figuratively expressing that view. Of course, there was the political insider sense also that Bobby was highly vulnerable to assassination — was Johnson referencing that or some more disturbing insider knowledge?
As for Hubert and the war, in late Sept 68 he did in fact distance himself publicly from Johnson’s war policy, calling for a bombing halt, which made LBJ very angry.
As for Johnson’s later bombing halt days before the election, he may have begun to turn against Nixon, after initially favoring him, after hearing about the back channel efforts by the Nixon camp to thwart the Paris talks. (Of course, he stopped short of calling out Nixon publicly for this treasonous activity.)
Prior to that however, in a Nixon visit to the WH post-GOP convention, the latter assured Johnson that he would not attack LBJ over the war, which assurance apparently greatly impressed the president, even coming from a known liar like Nixon.
A few more comments re LBJ and HHH: we’re dealing mainly in personal perceptions here, LBJ’s about how his VP would handle the VN situation were he to become president vs how Nixon wd deal with it.
LBJ likely perceived that a Pres Humphrey wd probably quickly wrap things up over there and bring the troops home, as he knew Humphrey was firmly against escalation in the first place– thus calling attention to the grave error in judgment by his predecessor. LBJ wd have perceived Nixon as more likely to ease out gradually — which is what happened — while not calling out Johnson publicly for making a serious FP mistake.
And when HHH was virtually assured of the nomination — roughly from the time Bobby was killed — what exactly did Johnson do to help his VP win the election? Not much — only the bombing halt very late in the game, which did improve Hubert’s numbers and support among antiwar Dems and closed the gap w Nixon. But too little too late.
Finally on McC/RFK and LBJ/RFK: yes bad blood in both those relationships, but far more deeply personal bad blood in the RFK/LBJ relationship. For instance, when Bobby was killed, most of the McC backers grieved along with the Kennedy campaign. Not so Lyndon, at least judging by how he coldly treated Bobby’s widow months later over a small request by her re RFK’s gravesite. I doubt very much Lyndon was at all unhappy to hear the news when Bobby was pronounced dead.
White recounts that Eagleton was McGovern’s fourth choice.
White called McGovern’s statement that he was 1000 percent behind Eagleton the worst gaffe in modern American politics. The whole things was a disaster – it wouldn’t have mattered. Time Magazine had a cover the week before the election stating “peace is at hand”.
Fourth choice at best. Other accounts have McG asking 6-7 other Dem pols — starting w/Ted Kennedy — and getting rejected by all, including the mayor of Boston. He then asked Sen Gaylord Nelson who in turn suggested the name of Sen Eagleton.
For sure, Nixon was going to beat McG that year, even if he’d run w/Teddy, as he had largely, cleverly and carefully taken VN off the table as a huge negative issue by withdrawing most of the troops. But McG staying loyal to Eagleton, and making lemonade out of a lemon, wd probably have led to a less disastrous defeat.
As for a comment upthread that Geo McG was the most able Dem nominee at that time since FDR, I would strongly disagree. He didn’t have the natural political smarts of Ted K, who was a level or so behind Bobby and Jack, and in my humble, in most years would have been only considered as VP material at best. One of the most decent men in the senate for sure, but hardly a great political talent. Roughly comparable as a presidential candidate to Adlai Stevenson, another decent man of liberal instincts who didn’t have what it took to compete for the big job.
In 1972 the power of the American PermaGov-owned media was reaching its peak. It had already proven itself by whitewashing the assassination era in the minds of the lumpen publitariat. The media made Nixon under orders from the PermaGov…it will act the same way under similar orders if an anti-war/pro-peace candidate does surface this year here in Omertica, bet on it… and it broke him when he disobeyed orders from the same interests. “Deep Throat” my royal Irish ass!!! The whole Watergate thing was an intelligence hustle the media segment of which was run through Bob Woodward, an intelligence media asset if ever there was one.
Have things changed now?
Not a chance. Not strategically, anyway. The strategy is to hustle the rubes, just as it’s always been. It’s only in terms of tactics that things are different in the current setup. Tactically the operation has become much more complex. The change is in the media system itself. It’s digital and thus much more dispersed than it was. More complicated. No more 2 or 3 newspapers and 2 or 3 TV networks; now it’s all over the place.
Is that a weakness? Let us pray that it is, but I think that dispersal problem will be overcome as well. they have promoted the Iraq War v.3 pretty damned well, as a cursory look at the top of today’s Google News page will certainly attest. Its lead headline as of 11:30 AM EST, 9/24/14?
From the Amazon-owned Washingtoon Post.
US military leaders: Strikes in Syria are just the start of a prolonged campaign
Riiiiight…
(By the way…Amazon is a CIA business partner if not even deeper in the intelligence mix. Bet on it.)
The general result in the minds of the gawping American public?
Bet on that as well.
About the latest “peace” candidates? We’ll see, won’t we.
Looks like business as usual, to me.
War business.
Calvin Coolidge said “…the chief business of the American people is business.”
Maybe then.
Now?
We’ll see.
On recent evidence? It’s obedience that is their chief business.
Obedience to the media’s dictates.
Watch.
AG
I don’t want a candidate who is against all wars. I just want a candidate who is against dumb wars.
You just said what I was trying to think of a way to say, so now I don’t have to.
you could not be more wrong – how about Walt Whitman? Leo Tolstoy? Wilfred Owen? and George McGovern? to name four. I think some commentators are confusing isolationism with “anti-war” and by anti-war does everyone mean pacifist?
Here, yes. Near as I can tell.
well, a pacifist president: Nixon was a Quaker, I guess that’s a start. (Davis X, I trust you to reply with some pithy wisdom)
We definitely need to push both of those distinctions.
The media clowns can’t understand that you can be engaged internationally by means other than killing people, and they virtually use “isolationism” as a synonym for “antiwar”. This leads a lot of especially young people to believe there’s something peaceful and brave and somehow left-wing about the Paul family’s old-fashioned Fortress America isolationism, which is as right-wing as can be, going back to Charles Lindbergh.
I think “antiwar” covers a big spectrum all the way out to Obama at one end, of people with the default position that war is a bad idea but can be persuaded to make exceptions (some more exceptions than others), where “pacifist” is far more narrow and strict and “nonviolent” is less an idea than a discipline, spiritual in character. I feel increasingly like a nonviolent person who doesn’t want to condemn those who are merely antiwar, like saying for Syria this week I don’t think this is going to work out very well but I understand why it’s happening and I can’t think Obama is an evil person for giving in to it, just limited as we all are in various ways. That’s kind of Buddhist.
Very very clear, what your write here, and very important. A principal significance of Obama’s move here, imo, is the coalition – i.e. his emphasis on negotiating the alliance that will deal with ISIS. It’s a major step. Also interesting in terms of your distinctions that of the 4 I listed who experienced war first hand three became pacifists, they also were artists and spiritual leaders, whereas McGovern was a political leader. I guess hard to say about Owen as his life was cut short. Tolstoy went from volunteering for combat as a young man, to mentoring Gandhi in non violent resistance in the last year of his [Tolstoy’s] life when Gandhi was getting his start in SA.
Apologies around here and to Sen Webb- I had him confused with someone else.
No. If he wanted to be another senior citizen running for POTUS in 2016, he should have done things as a Senator to distinguish himself as Elizabeth Warren has done AND not have quit after his one mostly invisible term in office.
Would like to hear that Sherrod Brown is thinking about running for POTUS. He’s not so young either but he would only be 63 years old during the campaign.
to have a younger Democrat who was also anti-war. I see O’Malley in Portsmouth NH in the next week.
It will be interesting to hear what he has to say about ISIS.
PLEASE do a diary afterward. PRETTY PLEASE!!!
Younger, and if we could someone with a little more candle wattage in the charisma dept. Although if we have to have someone lower than low-key, it doesn’t hurt that he’s from the Serpent Mound state.
I like his wife too.
Walter O’Malley I’m not that familiar with, except for that nasty business in Brooklyn a few years back.
O’Malley’s from MD, if that’s what you mean. But now I want to see the Serpent Mound, read about it, haven’t seen it [yet]
yes, pls do diary on this. hoping he runs and gets the nomination and wins!!!
Hey wait a second, I though Hillary was our next candidate! Now you’re telling me there might be other candidates?
just remember, you heard it here first
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/clinton-profits-wont-priority-no-172913872.html
He’s a well educated very intelligent man. He must think the rest of us are incredibly stupid to buy this right wing bullshit.
BS artist extraordinaire.
Wisdom and vision are separate cognitive skills developed independently from education and intelligence as both Clintons so aptly demonstrate. But doubt that Bill could even correctly define “goodwill” that appears on corporate balance sheets; so there are also huge gaps in his economic/business education.
Can the rest of you see the post titled:
Some is Good
Tuesday, September 23, 2014 at 1:30 PM via Booman Tribune
It shows up in my RSS feed with this:
When I click on the post from my RSS feed, I get this message:
“Sorry, but you can only moderate stories if you have a valid user account. Luckily for you, making one is easy! Just go here to get started.”
But if I go to boomantribune.com I don’t see that thread in the list at all.
Is anyone else able to see this post?
yes I’m seeing it as a regular front page post
Now, this morning, it works for me, too!
Glad to see a provocative thread on the front page. Thanks, Steven.
A Successful Presidential Peace Candidate? Not Bloody Likely.
Comment there if you wish to do so.
AG