Obama looks to have wrapped up the presidential nomination and will soon be turning at least a portion of his attention towards the search for a vice-president. One of the prime candidates is, certainly, James Webb, the tough-talking former marine who ended George Allen's Senate career and flipped the chamber over to the Democrats. And how does Webb feel about this? Officially, he's uninterested. But he's not exactly laying low. Next week, his new book, A Time To Fight, comes out. The description:Webb exposes how America has entered a dangerous, unprecedented cycle of seemingly unsolvable unknowns. Our economic policies, particularly in this age of globalization, have produced widely divergent results leading to a country calcifying along class lines. Our demographic makeup has been altered dramatically and is set to keep on changing, through both legal and illegal immigration. Our editorialists and politicians talk about the American dream, and some urge us to bring democracy to the rest of the world. But more than two million Americans are now in prison, by far the highest incarceration rate in the so-called advanced world. Our foreign policy is confused, without clear direction; increasingly vulnerable to such largely unexamined long-term threats as China's emerging power while it has become bogged down in the never-ending struggles of the Middle East. As this drift toward societal regression has taken place, America's leadership has largely been paralyzed, unable or unwilling to stop the slide. "Where are the leaders?" Webb asks. "Has our political process become so compromised by powerful interest groups and the threat of character assassination that even the best among us will not dare to speak honestly about the solutions that might bring us back to common sense and fundamental fairness?"Yep, where are the leaders indeed? Meanwhile, I just got a press release from Webb's folks laying out his media itinerary in the next week or two:
Sun, May 18: Meet the Press (NBC)Mon, May 19: CBS Early MorningMon, May 19: Fresh Air (NPR)Mon, May 19: Late Show with David Letterman (CBS)Tues, May 20: Countdown with Keith Olbermann (MSNBC)Tues, May 20: Lou Dobbs (CNN)None of this is proof positive of anything, but it's all rather suggestive.Photo used under a Creative Commons license from Waldo Jaquith.
