The Center Never Holds, Because There's Nothing There

In 2006, Virginia sent an interesting and unlikely Democrat to the U.S. Senate. Jim Webb was a decorated Marine who served as Ronald Reagan's secretary of the navy. He left the administration to oppose defense budget cuts, especially those which threatened the 600-ship Navy Reagan had built. Just six years before winning the Democratic senatorial nomination, Webb had endorsed both George W. Bush and George Allen.

Although Webb opposed the Iraq war, he hated the McGovernites who had taken over his ancestral Democratic Party. "Jane Fonda can kiss my ass," he once told a radio interviewer. "I wouldn't walk across the street to watch her slit her wrist." He wasn't very fond of Bill Clinton either. "Every time I see him salute a Marine," Webb remarked, "it infuriates me." When Clinton left office, Webb gave him this raspberry on the page of the Wall Street Journal op-ed page: "It is a pleasurable experience to watch Bill Clinton finally being judged, even by his own party, for the ethical fraudulence that has characterized his entire political career."