E-mail a friendSen. Jim Webb
airdate June 11, 2008
Elected in '06 as Virginia's junior senator, Jim Webb is a highly-decorated Vietnam veteran and was the first Naval Academy graduate in history to serve in the military and then become Secretary of the Navy. Webb is also a best-selling author and previously worked as a Hollywood screenwriter-producer, winning an Emmy for his coverage of U.S. Marines in Beirut. In '04, he was embedded with the U.S. military in Afghanistan. His committee assignments include Foreign Relations, Armed Services and Veterans Affairs.
Senator discusses the Webb-Hagel G.I. bill and his efforts to improve educational benefits for service men and women. (2:22)
Full Interview (11:19)
Sen. Jim Webb
Tavis: Senator Jim Webb is serving in his first term in the U.S. Senate, following years of public service in a number of different capacities, first as a decorated Marine in Vietnam and later as an assistant secretary of Defense, and then Navy secretary under Ronald Reagan.
He is also an accomplished author, screenwriter, and producer whose latest book is called "A Time to Fight: Reclaiming a Fair and Just America." He joins us tonight from Washington. Senator Webb, nice to have you back on the program, sir.
Sen. Jim Webb: Good evening, Tavis.
Tavis: Let me start with the obvious question, given the book's title, "A Time to Fight." A time to fight for what, exactly?
Webb: (Laughs) Well, the book is divided into three sections. One is how we define ourselves as a country and then the second is where the breaking points are, where things have gone wrong over the last 20, 25 years, some of them economic, some of them national strategic policy, security policy, and some on the criminal justice system, and then sort of a reflection on where we should go from here and the need for strong leadership.
Tavis: To your first point, how we define ourselves as Americans, has that changed over the years? And if so, tell me how, as you see it.
Webb: Well, I think actually it's good for us to lay down how we formed this country, how it was formed through different patterns of immigration, the evolution of a multicultural society where we need a level playing field, and there's one fairly long chapter about the Constitution and the process itself. It's called "The Genius in the Limits of the Constitution." It's the arbiter that we need to go back to in a lot of our discussions. And then moving into where the breaking points are.
Tavis: In an America that is now as multicultural, as multiracial, as multiethnic as the one is now that we live in, situate for me how that conversation about how we define ourselves ought to be taking place in a contemporary setting.
Webb: Well actually, I think a lot of the changes that have happened outside of government are a little ahead of what's happened inside government, but we need a level playing field, and the Constitution is a place where that's defined. And if you look at what has happened just since I graduated from college in terms of issues regarding economic fairness.
I think that we have drifted well away from anywhere we've been since probably Teddy Roosevelt's time in terms of the difference between not only the top and the bottom but difference between the top and everybody else. And a good part of that is government policy that has assisted this breakdown.
Tavis: And yet the platform that John McCain is going to run on, to your point now, is that government ought to get out of our lives. Isn't that the standard Republican refrain every four years, that government is too much in our pocketbooks, too much in our lives? I hear you suggesting that the problems that we are experiencing now are, in fact, because of government, to some degree
Webb: Well, one thing that I say in the book I that governments can help create aristocracies, and governments can help perpetuate aristocracies, and that was the foundation of what we call Jacksonian democracy, the beginnings of the modern Democratic Party, was that government should stop artificial aristocracies from continuing their power.
So we got right now in this country a lot of people, we call them the economic Darwinists, the people who believe that it's simply the competition of the open marketplace that has created these extremes, when in fact a lot of government policies have.
The top one percent of this country has benefitted greatly, particularly over the last eight years, and we are in danger of creating a permanent underclass with a lot of the fall-back programs but not true opportunity. And the middle with trade policies and these sort of things where we've seen a breakdown of the working class people. So we need to focus back on that again.
Tavis: Whether we call it, as you have in this conversation so far, economic fairness, or whether we call it a real conversation about how to eradicate poverty in America, I mentioned John McCain on the Republican side a moment ago. On the Democratic side, one John Edwards, as you know, tried to raise this issue. He started and ended his campaign in New Orleans around the issue of Katrina and the focus on poverty there.
All throughout his campaign he tried to talk about these two economically disparate Americas, and to my mind, at least, John Edwards got more exposure for endorsing Barack Obama once he, of course, was out of the race than he ever got media attention while he was in the race for trying to talk about the issue of poverty.
I raise all that, Senator Webb, to say to you or to ask you, with all due respect to the time that you spend in this book talking about economic fairness, to your credit, talking about eradicating poverty, how does that issue in real life, off the pages of a book, get traction in an election year? It didn't work for John Edwards.
Webb: John Edwards missed the boat, and I said this two years ago when I was running for the Senate, that he kept talking about the two Americas, when the reality in this country is what I was calling when I ran the three Americas. And the fact is that the middle part of this country has been devastated by globalization, by the internationalization of the economy, by increased medical costs, these sorts of things.
And the truth, which is very difficult for a lot of people in the political process to talk about, is that the very top of our society has moved away from everyone else. It's no longer rich versus poor; that's an argument that doesn't get a whole lot of traction among the middle class people who are trying to make ends meet. It's the movement at the very top.
When I graduated from college the average corporate CEO made 20 times what the average worker made. Today, the average corporate CEO makes 400 times what the average worker makes. So you see a gravitation at the very top and everybody else kind of being left behind, and we need government policies that will help address that.
Tavis: One of the other issues that you talk about in this book, to your credit, with great courage is what you call the incarceration culture. Others would call it the prison or jail industrial complex. Here again, another issue that is a legitimate issue, given that we lock up more Americans than any other country locks up its citizens, and yet I just don't sense that's a popular subject to be talking about during an election season, Senator Webb.
Webb: It's - and I write about this in the book - it's not an issue that very many politicians want to touch, but I started talking about it when - actually, I started talking about it 25 years ago when I had gone to look at the Japanese criminal justice system as a journalist and came back and started comparing their numbers to our own.
At that time, we had 780,000 people in jail; they had 40,000, a country half our size. Now we have 2.38 million people in jail, seven million people involved in the process in one way or another, either on probation or etc., and I held a hearing last year on the incarceration in this country, I'm holding another one this month on the whole drug culture in this country, how it's impacting us in terms of incarceration, etc., and this is a real national crisis.
It just does not bubble up to the very top and a lot of politicians are afraid of it because they don't want to be seen as soft on crime. But we need to address it and I'm going to address it.
Tavis: You've been in the news of late for three reasons. One, of course, because this book is on the "New York Times" bestseller list, and we're glad to have you on to talk about that. Secondly because some guy named Obama, we are told, has you on his short list - we'll come back to that in just a second - as running mate.
But on a serious note, you've been in the news of late because of this GI bill that you are trying to get through Congress, the Webb-Hagel GI bill. Tell me about it right quick.
Webb: Well, I introduced that bill my first day as a senator. I actually sat down and wrote it before I was sworn in; I used to be a committee counsel on that issue. The whole idea is we keep talking about these people, and some people use the phrase the next greatest generation, and yet the educational benefits that they get from serving are really lamentable.
And I've put this bill in basically saying if you think this service is equal to those who went off to World War II, and I do, then let's give them the same class at a first-class future. And we started with Harry Reid believing in us and talking to people and convincing them and listening to veterans' groups, and we ended up with 58 cosponsors, 11 of them Republicans.
And we just got the first shot through the Senate with 75 votes, almost unheard of on an appropriations bill, and we're just hoping we can get it to a place where this president will sign it.
Tavis: Are you hopeful about that? Why would he not?
Webb: He opposed it all the way. (Laughs) He said it was too costly, at the same time we're putting $2 trillion into this war. He said it would affect retention in the military, which I served in the military, I got five years in the Pentagon, I reject that notion. I think it's going to increase recruitment. So we've been trying to be patient, work across party lines. And if I were George Bush, I would want to sign this bill. What else is he going to go out with?
Tavis: Very quickly, what does it say to you about how we value our troops when we don't get behind legislation like this?
Webb: Well, there's actually a chapter in my book called "Who Doesn't Like Soldiers Now?" and I have a strong belief from - I grew up in the military, I served in the military, I've got family members in the military today, I got a strong belief that people shouldn't politicize what our military folks do.
People go in the military because they love their country, not because they're backing a political agenda, and we need to stick with that. And there are a lot of people who have tried to politicize what our troops have done, and this is the time to take politics out and give them the proper reward.
Tavis: I've got less than 30 seconds left, but I'm sure you won't even need all that time, given the answer that I expect to get when I ask this question: what say you about Jim Webb being Barack Obama's running mate?
Webb: I'm happy to help Barack in a lot of different ways and give him advice. I think the world of him. I'm not interested in being vice president.
Tavis: Told you it wouldn't take 30 seconds. I got 28 seconds to go. (Laughter) Just enough time to tell you that I'm always delighted to have Jim Webb on this program. His new book is "A Time to Fight: Reclaiming a Fair and Just America." Of course, a member of that distinguished body, the U.S. Senate. Senator Webb, nice to have you on the program, all the best to you, sir.
Webb: Good to be with you. Thank you, Tavis.
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