AGAINST WEBB. To go against the tide of Webb promotion here, let me come out, early and strongly, against his worth as a vice-presidential pick. The reasons we like Webb -- his evident sense of conviction, damn-the-torpedoes plain-spokenness, clear beliefs about the state of the world, willingness to state unpopular political truths, etc -- make him almost uniquely unsuitable for the second-banana slot. The guy is not an empty-vessel to be filled with the policy preferences of Clinton, or Obama, or Richardson. He has decidedly deep ideas about economic fairness that veer far more towards protectionism than any major Democrat is comfortable with, and that includes Edwards, who occasionally flirts with the rhetoric without substantively embracing the policy platform. His foreign policy vision, similarly, is coherent and whole, and while many Democrats agree with the conclusions he's reached on Iraq, it's not necessarily clear that they'd find such deep accord on all other issues. To force Webb to knuckle beneath a nominee's ideological agenda would be a disaster. One can argue that Webb himself may want to mount a presidential run someday. I'm not terribly confident in that, but it's a perfectly reasonable claim. What you wouldn't want -- either for Webb or the nominee -- is to put him in the secondary slot, erasing all his virtues while enabling damage from his prickly, contrarian vices. He gave a great response to the President's speech and will prove a powerful and unique voice for Democrats in the future, but folks have to stop defaulting to VP boosterism whenever they see someone they like. It would be good for the country if both parties rediscovered the virtue in having prominent, nationally respected Senators and Congressmen, who were loved and lauded for their worth to the institutions they served, rather than merely as prospects for the next presidential. Not every star needs to be pushed into the executive branch. --Ezra Klein
