Sen. Jim Webb: Trying to remake American politics through populism

Jim Webb, left, the Democrat elected U.S. senator from Virginia in a big upset last year, is "trying to remake the American electoral landscape from the ground up," beginning in Appalachia, Rolling Stone says in its June 14 edition, introduciing a good profile of Webb by Jeff Sharlet, who sets the scene with Webb's visit with coal miners and families in Lebanon, Va., after touring the Laurel Mountain Mine (photo from Webb's Web site).

"After 9/11, the old labels don't apply," Webb told Sharlet. "The country is just a different place. And now we can remake the party system in the United States if we can get Reagan Democrats -- or whatever you want to call 'em." Politics tends to be defined by presidents; Tom Wolfe, a friend and fellow author, "insists Webb will be president one day" and sees him "as a revolutionary -- a conservative who could succeed where the left failed," Sharlet reports.

Webb, a highly decorated Vietnam veteran who was Navy secretary under Ronald Reagan, "loves war so much he can't stand to see one bungled as badly as Bush has the one in Iraq," Sharlet writes. "There's only the cause driving this stupidity into the sand, not the needs of a nation. It's the work of the elites Webb has always hated." He quotes Webb: "America's top tier . . . are literally living in a different country. Few among them send their children to public schools. Fewer still send their loved ones to war."

The elites of his ire were once liberals; now they are conservatives and businesses that profit from war. Webb was once a Republican; now he is a Democrat who models himself after Andrew Jackson, "another man of war who went to Washington on a populist crusade." (Read more) Webb wrote about Jackson in Born Fighting, a history of the Scots-Irish in America, which begins with Webb's roots in southwest Virginia.