Mr. Webb, whose national poll ratings are negligible, may look like an unlikely candidate, but that is also what most observers thought when he wore his son’s Iraq combat boots on the campaign trail and ousted George Allen from his Senate seat in 2006. Today he represents for the Democrats what the Republicans tried to stamp out in their ranks during the midterm elections: a Tea-Party-like insurgency against its establishment candidate.
Mr. Webb, who prides himself on his Scotch-Irish ancestry, has long been something of a renegade, a persona that vividly manifested itself after Sept. 11, 2001, when he began denouncing what he saw as the transformation of the American presidency into a European-style monarchy that could capriciously pursue wars whenever and wherever it chose. Unlike Mrs. Clinton, who continues to struggle to explain her vote for the Iraq war, Mr. Webb publicly attacked the George W. Bush administration in 2002, presciently asking, “Do we really want to occupy Iraq for the next 30 years?” As a member of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees he also castigated the Obama administration for its intervention in Libya in 2011. He was right. It’s a move that has boomeranged, creating further instability and emboldening jihadists across the region.
During and after the Libya intervention, Mr. Webb made it clear that he believed American democracy was imperiled by the failure of Congress to question the judgment of military leaders and the president. He has put his finger on a problem that academics like Tufts University’s Michael J. Glennon, the author of “National Security and Double Government,” see as a product of an entrenched national security bureaucracy that essentially performs an end-run around Congress and even reform-minded presidents.
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