I get asked a fair bit why we never seem to get good presidential candidates. The answer is probably that almost no one can stand tall with partisan forces determined to rip them apart. Even good, fairly reasonable men such as John Kerry, John McCain and Mitt Romney have been torn apart and demonized in recent cycles. But this time things feel a little different. We might really have fields of bad candidates.
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders would start at war with a Congress that loathes them. Donald Trump is Donald Trump. Ted Cruz has a penchant for making enemies. While there have been some genuinely good candidates in the mix, they have tended to stay low in the polls and earn the scorn of their party’s bases when they rise.
Honestly, I think there are only two candidates who could span the partisan divide and get to work on America’s most pressing problems. One of them, Michael Bloomberg, I am wary of due to his Wall Street ties and history with Stop-and-Frisk. The other is former Sen. Jim Webb.
The only thing you probably remember about Jim Webb is that he appeared in the first Democratic debate and talked about the time he killed a man. More accurately, he alluded to the time he took out three bunkers of enemy soldiers and threw himself in front of a grenade for a friend. He was awarded a Navy Cross, a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts for it.
After Vietnam, he became Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of the Navy and Assistant Secretary of Defense. Webb resurfaced politically in the mid-2000s and won one of Virginia’s Senate seats. He used his position to draft the modern GI bill and advocate for reform of the criminal justice system.
Webb’s policy positions don’t cleanly fall in line with either party’s. He has stated that, “We cannot tax ourselves into prosperity,” but his platform has a major emphasis on fairness and bringing CEO pay down and workers' up. He wants to lower tax rates while eliminating deductions, which is more commonly associated with fiscal conservatives than liberals. But his website also talks favorably about FDR’s approach to unemployment.
Abroad, Webb prefers to stay out of wars when possible. When wars must be fought, he is adamant that our veterans must be cared for. He’s generally liberal on social issues such as abortion and LGBT rights, but he doesn’t place much emphasis on them in his campaign.
This leads into the primary reason I prefer Webb to Bloomberg. The latter, for all of his merits, is tainted by allowing and defending a system where police could detain and search people of color without accusing them of a crime. Bloomberg furthered systemic oppression. Webb is definitely not perfect on the issue; he’s given cringeworthy statements on Black Lives Matter, affirmative action and the Confederate flag. He also tends to discuss criminal justice in non-racial terms. But he has at least taken prominent stands to recognize African American veterans and is married to a person of color. For all of his flaws, he at least doesn't have a policy of supporting law and order policies that hurt minority communities, like Clinton and Bloomberg do.
Really, though, the reason to back Webb has less to do with his stances and more to do with his character. Our nation faces real problems in terms of infrastructure, health care, the justice system and the debt. Congress needs to act soon or we will all suffer later. Will Republicans listen to a socialist or a Clinton? Will Democrats stand by and refuse to filibuster Cruz or Trump? Webb, with his service on the battlefield and in the Reagan administration, could gain Republicans' respect. And through his more liberal stances on income inequality and other issues he could get Democrats to go along. Jim Webb is an experienced and serious leader who could earn respect across the political aisle.
As an independent candidate without billions in the bank, he faces long odds. But I will take those odds over Congress getting its act together under almost any major party candidate.