Webb No Wonder For Obama-Rama

I agree with Frank Rich of the New York Times more than I disagree with him, but he brought up the following scenario yesterday here in a column about John McCain, the all-but-named Repug nominee for president, and I just want to comment on it…

If, as he says, the surge is “succeeding,” voters may well join the Democratic ticket (possibly including the Vietnam War hero Jim Webb?) in asking why we’ll still have some 140,000 troops on indefinite duty in Iraq as of this summer, a year and a half after this “temporary” escalation was announced.

Here I believe we have more pundit navel gazing for no good reason (and you can add this to the “conventional wisdom” that a longer primary fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is automatically good news for Republicans).

Senator Jim Webb of Virginia deserves credit for introducing the “dwell time” amendment here which stipulated that all soldiers should be given as much time or more between deployments as the amount of time of the deployment itself, though the amendment was defeated. And Webb’s voting record has ended up mirroring our own Bob Casey’s fairly closely as it turns out.

That’s both good and bad, however. Both have been inconsistent on the telco immunity issue concerning FISA (fighting before eventually caving), and Webb has consistently voted against the amendment by Russ Feingold to begin redeploying our troops out of Iraq (here).

I think that, for these reasons, naming Webb to the ticket with either Obama or Hillary is asking for trouble; it would end up undercutting what they're all about. And given the geography involved, I don’t think there’s enough of a benefit to either candidate when it comes to the south, and it will be seen as a pandering move, which I think it is in fact (the south, by and large, would go for Hillary less than they would go for Obama as of now anyway). Also, it overstates the notion of trying to negate any military “cred” from McCain; we all know how much good any military advantage was for John Kerry versus Dubya four years ago.

For these reasons and more, I think the choice for either Obama or HRC as a running mate is the easiest, safest one, and that would be Bill Richardson (pictured).

There are so many ways that adding Richardson to the ticket would complement the nominee. As former governor of Arizona, he has a record of sound fiscal administration and job creation. As a former diplomatic envoy and U.N. representative, he has a record in foreign policy that I believe in unmatched among prospective candidates for the second part of the ticket (all of this and more is detailed here).

Most importantly, though, he would provide the Latino support that either candidate (particularly Obama) would need in the general election (this article in the Times yesterday by James Traub explains the back-and-forth between the African American and Latino voting blocs in this country; though the Repugs have largely lost these individuals because of their idiotic immigration intransigence – excepting Florida, of course – no Dem should ever take their votes for granted).

Nominating Richardson would put a metaphorical boot onto the throat of the McCain candidacy when it comes to the Hispanic vote (and by no means am I trying to diminish Richardson himself here; I don’t mean to imply for a second that adding him is an act of political calculation and nothing more). Hillary is a little more solid with the Latino vote than Obama and would have a little more flexibility on the VP choice I believe, but in the event that she doesn’t make it, I think this should be a lock for Richardson (and I’m sure that he’d have some “home state” dirt on McCain also, to use only as a last resort though).