Strange choice

I’m continually struck by the tendency of so many Democrats to talk – usually, but not always in disparaging terms – about John McCain’s military service, even as they let more potentially fertile fields of discussion lay fallow. The next step in this baffling strategy seems to be to express resentment when the senator from Arizon responds. Virginia Senator Jim Webb has now stepped into the McCain/Massengale Clark fray, saying that McCain has been imputing his own policy views upon the military generally for political purposes. Which, perhaps that’s happened – I honestly haven’t noticed – but mostly it seems that he and his campaign have been forced to parry petulant philippics from Obama proxies.

In any case, Webb – whose own military career includes no-kidding acts of personal heroism in combat – seems oddly placed to ask McCain to lay off it: Not only have both men used their own personal records of service as testaments to their public character, but both have sons that served as Marines in Iraq. John McCain made very little mention of his son’s service there, while Webb spent his 2006 election campaign literally wearing his son’s combat boots on the stump.

Nothing wrong with that, considering Webb’s criticism of the Iraq war and his desire to keep the welfare of the troops in the forefront. But then to turn around and say that McCain is making too much of his military connections seems at the very least a bit disingenuous.