OLEAN -- I rise to the defense of a United States senator, something I have rarely been motivated to attempt in my 45 years in journalism, even when I was covering the Senate.
The senator in question is Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, famous Marine, accomplished novelist, Vietnam war hero, screenwriter of successful movies and the fledgling politician whose hair-breadth election a month ago was the last decided for that chamber -- one which handed an unexpected 51-49 majority in the Senate to the Democrats.
As last week ended, he was attacked in print -- unfairly, I believe -- by the famous conservative columnist George F. Will.
Will called Webb, among other things, a "boor," a "pompous poseur" and an "abuser of the English language." Webb is none of these.
Will implied Webb was susceptible to "derangement by the derivative dignity of office." Webb, unlike many of his new colleagues, is not deranged. F
ull disclosure: I've met and conversed with George Will. But I know Jim Webb. We have mutual good friends. He invited me to his investiture as secretary of the Navy during the Reagan administration. It was at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis -- his alma mater. I sat next to Webb's friend Roger Mudd, the former CBS news anchor. I was also Webb's guest -- with about 100 others -- on a party train from Washington to Philadelphia to attend an exciting Army-Navy football game, another terrific time. I have had numerous conversations with the man -- some of them in his apartment where he writes. I have introduced him to friends of mine. He has introduced me to friends of his. I have interviewed him for news stories.
After all of our dealings, I came away thinking he is probably one of the most articulate, forthright, clear-thinking, down-to-earth, trustworthy, honest, courageous, intellectually gifted public figures I've met during 22 years in Washington.
Webb -- a celebrated boxer in his younger years -- can be inclined to confrontation. He can get in your face. But it's always for a reason. He doesn't look for trouble. But when trouble comes, he responds directly. He doesn't start arguments. He ends them.
This state's senior senator, Charles Schumer, inadvertently and humorously put his finger on the situation when he said this of Webb just before the election: "He's not a typical politician. He really has deep convictions."
Bingo! Right on the button.
If Jim Webb told me the sky is not usually blue, but brown with orange and green polka dots, I'd tend to believe him. I'd check it out, but I'd give it a chance of being true.
Webb -- as noted in his recent book "Born Fighting" -- comes from a long line of Scots-Irish patriots who have served their country in the military. Webb's own bright and personable son Jimmy quit Penn State recently to join the Marines out of a sense of patriotic and family duty. His father wore his son's combat boots on the campaign trail. Jimmy is now a lance corporal in the thick of it in Iraq.
Two Webb-related actions that drew the recent attention of the Washington chattering class apparently put George Will's knickers in a twist.
The first occurred at a White House reception in the State Room of the East Wing for newly elected members of Congress. During the traditional gathering, Webb had a short, but now-famous, conversation with President George W. Bush. According to those who were there, it went something like this:
President Bush: "How's your boy?"
Webb: "I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President."
Bush: "That's not what I asked you. How's your boy?"
Webb: "That's between me and my boy, Mr. President."
Columnist Will portrayed this as "calculated rudeness." He called it a "gross offense" by Webb, filled with "patent disrespect for the presidency."
Give me a break.
First of all, Will, in his description of the exchange, conveniently left out the provocative little response line from President Bush: "That's not what I asked you. How's your boy?"
Anyone who's been in an argument with a spouse, or who remembers high school English teachers, knows in the American idiom "That's not what I asked you" carries with it the implied insult "What are you, hard of hearing?"
Or, "Are you avoiding my question?"
To then repeat the question means "Answer it!"
Bush was probably agitated that the new senator -- instead of responding with the groveling any president is accustomed to -- had the guts to bring up a controversial subject, the duration of our misadventure in Iraq.
Secondly, Webb has maintained in subsequent interviews -- instead of the "studied truculence" Will cites to describe the incident -- it was he (Webb) who sought to avoid a confrontation.
He did not attend an earlier lunch with Bush that day, and he did not join the usual long line of fawning sycophants from both political parties in Congress who want to have their photo taken with the president to show the folks back home how important they are.
Here's how Webb explained that later to the Washington Post: "I'm not particularly interested in having a picture of me and George W. Bush on my wall. No offense to the institution of the presidency, and I'm certainly looking forward to working with him and his administration. Leaders do some symbolic things to try to convey who they are and what the message is."
Thirdly, Will described President Bush as asking "a civil and caring question, as one parent to another." One parent to another?
Are the Bush twin daughters now in Iraq? No. Is Bush worried about their safety? The answer to this last is yes, and I know the president loves his daughters even when they're partying in Buenos Aires, and I suspect he frets even when they get their cell phones and credit cards stolen in nightclubs. But it's hardly the same as thinking about your child watching his friends get blown apart in a tank next to his, or being in a place where having his head cut off is not beyond the realm of possibility.
Finally, columnist Will accused Webb of "going out of his way to make waves."
I'd call it: Not Taking Crap from Anyone, Even the President of the United States.
If a few more of our elected representatives showed the same backbone, we wouldn't be in the trouble we're in -- in Iraq, here at home, or in the world in general.
The second item sparking Will's petulance is a column Webb wrote for The Wall Street Journal a week after his election. Webb noted this country's "steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century" and called it one of the "least debated" issues in politics."
Webb continued: "America's top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a different country."
Will called this "slapdash prose that would be rejected by a reasonably demanding high school teacher" and wrote that use of the words "least debated" was a "careless and absurd assertion" because the nation's wealth gap is "incessantly discussed."
The super-rich do not "literally" live in another country, sniffed Will, as he also quibbled with use of the word "infinitely" to describe how much richer our corporate masters have grown in the last quarter century.
Well, well, well -- hasn't George Will turned into the picky, persnickety, Pecksniffian old grump? My Webster's Dictionary defines in the first instance the word "infinitely" as "extending beyond measure or comprehension."
Some of these new mammoth CEO salaries and stock options do just that. I can comprehend neither the reason for them, nor justification. Neither can I get my head around receiving hundreds of millions of dollars just for running a company. Sure it's a tough job. So is driving a truck or digging a well. I think these greedball salaries are damaging to the country and to the economy. I think Webb used the word correctly.
And I believe Webb was correct in saying the uber-rich "literally" live in a different country. Any thinking reader knows he didn't mean living outside our national borders (although some of them do part of the year). He meant the daily life they experience in America is vastly removed from the daily life poorer citizens -- and even the vanishing middle class -- live and struggle through, even though they're within the same political boundaries.
And it is awe-producing, mind-boggling irony that columnist Will should tear into one of the country's best writers for imagined errors in prose in the same space that Will defends one of the worst serial "abusers of the English language" to ever open his mouth. George W. Bush makes Borat sound like Alistair Cooke.
The president's father, Bush the Elder, made many verbal gaffes during his White House days, but Dubya's almost daily howlers make his father resemble Abraham Lincoln in eloquence. The current president makes them almost daily.
In recent months, the same president who asked, "Is our children learning?" to decry lack of educational performance, has uttered these gems:
"Families is where our nation finds home, where wings take dream."
"I understand small business growth. I was one."
"I think anybody who doesn't think I'm smart enough to handle the job is underestimating."
Last June, introducing another head of state, President Bush recounted he had told the visitor "that it was not always a given that the United States and America would have a close relationship."
Bragging that his vacation reading included Camus and "three Shakespeares," Dubya told NBC anchor Brian Williams that "I've got a eck-a-lec-tic reading list."
Prompted by a German reporter's question last summer, Dubya reflected that his best moment in office occurred "when I caught a 7.5-pound largemouth bass in my lake." The sad thing is, he probably was telling the truth.
So don't criticize the articulate Sen. Jim Webb for "slapdash" prose in the same space you defend your president's speech, even as he speculates on an upcoming nuclear weapons conference by saying, "One has a stronger hand when there's more people playing your same cards." Huh?
In addition to all of the above, Will's last insult to reason was this:
"One shudders to think what he (Webb) will be like as a senator," trembled Will in his conclusion.
Here's what makes me shudder:
Who's the "pompous poseur" now?
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | December 5 2006 |