Jim Webb's 'Culture' War
And the Democratic frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton has lurched to the left to fend off the surprising popularity of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an avowed "democratic socialist."
Yet as Webb expresses in his historical study of the role his fellow Scots-Irishmen played in U.S. history -- varying from Andrew Jackson to Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and beyond -- the Virginian feels attracted to fights for seemingly lost causes.
That would explain why in 2010 he jumped into the touchy topic of affirmative action with a Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined, "Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege."
Webb actually defends affirmative action for African-Americans in his essay, based on historical reasons dating back to slavery and Jim Crow segregation. But he opposes expanding it to other "people of color," which includes everybody but whites. America still owes a debt to its black citizens, but government programs to help all "people of color" should end, he declares
That's a nice principled position, but politically it's self-defeating. It gains him little ground with African-Americans to fight for what's left of affirmative action and it angers everybody else, particularly whites who feel -- rightly or wrongly -- that they already are getting the short end of government programs.
Yet Webb's quest has been worth watching for his efforts to bridge a gap that has befuddled liberals for decades: Why do so many lower-income people vote against their own economic self-interest?
Webb's 2006 campaign adviser David "Mudcat" Saunders, expressed it well in an interview with The New Yorker for a Webb profile: "Do you ever consider that there might be a powerful force at work, and that it's driving these people to vote against their economic self-interest?" Saunders said. "I'm telling you, it's there. It's called culture."
Indeed, right or left, people vote for more than their economic interests alone. Most of all, they like to be asked.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)
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