Who can deny that many outlandish notions have materialized from the mouth and mind of President Donald Trump?
From recorded statements about grabbing women to slurs about “s------- countries” and crank revisionism about the Soviets’ 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, the weirdness and incivility never end.
Just the other day, we heard Trump’s rambling, bizarre self-estimation: “I would’ve been a good general,” compared to the ones he has in the Pentagon.
Puh-lease.
Perhaps Trump’s strangest idea ever concerns Jim Webb, the former U.S. senator from Virginia. Thursday, The New York Times reported Trump is floating Webb as a possible secretary of defense.
(Friday evening Trump tweeted the report was “FAKE NEWS.” But he’s done that before on things that turned out to be true.)
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Webb, whom I contacted by email Friday, isn’t talking. But it will never happen. If it does, I’ll eat this column on camera. Let’s ponder some of the reasons it’s a farce.
One is something we’ll call “the pandering factor.” Trump is well known for appointing boot-lickers to his Cabinet and inner circle. Occasionally, the president assembles them before TV cameras so they can fawn over him in an awkward display of obsequiousness.
At one of those dog-and-pony shows in 2017, Vice President Mike Pence said: “It is just the greatest privilege of my life is to serve as the — as vice president to the president who’s keeping his word to the American people and assembling a team that’s bringing real change, real prosperity, real strength back to our nation.”
At the same meeting, then White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus piped up: “We thank you for the opportunity and the blessing that you’ve given us to serve your agenda and the American people.”
Can you imagine Jim Webb groveling to Trump like that? Dave “Mudcat” Saunders, perhaps Webb’s closest pal in Roanoke, cannot. Saunders played a key role in Webb’s 2006 election to the Senate. Friday, I called Saunders to discuss the big rumor.
He said hadn’t spoken with Webb about the secretary of defense gig. But Saunders said this: “Jim Webb is constitutionally incapable of kissing anyone’s a--.”
Heck, Jim Webb doesn’t even know how to pander to the electorate. When he challenged incumbent U.S. Sen. George Allen in 2006, Webb was pretty stiff on the campaign trail. He won that race partly because of an off-the-cuff ethnic slur Allen made on camera, which dogged Allen during his re-election campaign.
The second reason is the polar opposite personality styles of Trump and Webb. The phrase “oil and water” does not do justice to how different the two men are.
Trump is a blustery carnival barker and ex-reality TV star. He went to a military prep school but dodged the draft during the Vietnam War via a questionable diagnosis of “bone spurs” in his feet. According to The New York Times, the suspect diagnosis came from a podiatrist-tenant of Trump’s father, Fred, a New York landlord.
Trump later bragged to Howard Stern that his most perilous experiences during Vietnam occurred as a Manhattan playboy, chasing women while remaining venereal disease-free.
By contrast, Webb is reserved and tough. He’s also a certified war hero. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and served as a Marine Corps first lieutenant in Vietnam. One day, during a search-and-destroy mission in enemy territory, Webb led a platoon that blew up three occupied enemy bunkers. At the first bunker, Webb captured an enemy combatant with his own two hands.
As his platoon approached the third and final bunker, an enemy soldier threw a grenade that landed near Webb and a fellow Marine. Below is the rest of the story, from the citation accompanying a Navy Cross, one of six medals Webb earned in the war (it’s the U.S. military’s second-highest medal for valor in combat):
“Observing the grenade land dangerously close to his companion, First Lieutenant Webb simultaneously fired his weapon at the enemy, pushed the Marine away from the grenade, and shielded him from the explosion with his own body. Although sustaining painful fragmentation wounds from the explosion, [Webb] managed to throw a grenade into the aperture and completely destroy the remaining bunker.”
While Webb was in Vietnam ducking RPGs, Donald Trump was in New York City avoiding STDs. Do you think Webb would take orders from a guy like that?
Reason number three is Webb’s previous high-level service in the Pentagon. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan appointed Webb to be secretary of the Navy. But Webb resigned barely nine months later over a disagreement with Reagan about how many ships the Navy should have. Webb wanted more; Reagan sought fewer.
Resignation under such circumstances is honorable. It’s what a high-level appointee does during a bedrock disagreement with a president. And that’s exactly why former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis resigned in December. Mattis disagreed with Trump on an imminent pullout of U.S. troops from Syria.
Do you think Trump would risk appointing Webb knowing Webb might walk even faster than Mattis did?
There’s a fourth reason Webb won’t end up as secretary of defense. Last week, Saunders and Webb exchanged emails trying to figure out the best time Webb can visit Saunders here this spring. The subject of the Pentagon didn’t come up in that exchange, Saunders said.
“I hope [Webb] doesn’t take it,” Saunders told me. “It’ll screw up our hunting and fishing.”
