I promised last month to explain why we ran an article on the Senate race in Virginia between Republican incumbent George Allen and Democratic challenger James Webb. I will. First, though, I want to give a much deserved thanks to Chris Michel, a former naval flight officer who until two months ago wrote a popular monthly column for us called Charting Your Course.
In CYC, Chris offered career advice to members of the armed forces, with an emphasis on those making the transition from military to civilian life. He was eminently qualified for the job. After the Navy, he founded Military.com, a hugely successful company that focuses on assisting service members, veterans, and their families in accessing the benefits they earned while serving their country.
Chris made a startling admission to me a couple of months ago, one I had never expected to hear from a writer. He told me that over the three years of writing CYC he had said everything he wanted to say. As a result, he had decided it was time to retire the column. I was flabbergasted. No mission creep for Chris.
Our readers will miss Chris' engaging, crisply written, and most valuable column. But Chris isn't going anywhere. A member of the USNI Board of Directors, he has promised to continue writing for us as fresh thoughts surface.
In October, as the mid-year election campaign was heating up, we ran the Virginia Senate race story. Some readers liked it, others didn't. The standard complaint was that I had published a "partisan political article" that had no place in a journal devoted to the Sea Services.
First, this was certainly an article about politics, but there was nothing partisan about it. Read it over and I feel confident you'll find that it did not tilt toward Senator Allen or former Navy Secretary Webb. I told our correspondent, Paul West, that I wanted the piece to be straight down the middle and that's what he delivered.
What motivated me to ask Paul, the Baltimore Sun's Washington bureau chief, to write the article was that in most states the war in Iraq had not yet overwhelmed the campaign to the extent it did at the end. It seemed to me then that no state other than Virginia featured a general election campaign that so clearly constituted a referendum on the war. Senator Allen was a fervent supporter of President Bush's war policy. Ex-Secretary Webb had opposed it since before the March 2003 invasion. Unlike candidates in other states, he had made it the center of gravity of his campaign. If Mr. Allen were to win, as expected, his victory would be seen as an affirmation of Mr. Bush. If underdog Webb were to defeat Mr. Allen in a conservative Republican state like Virginia, it would be read as a repudiation of the President's position.
In the end, largely because of missteps by Mr. Allen, the meaning of the Webb victory was not crystal clear. By then, though, the war issue had bled into races all over the country and the electorate had delivered a resounding message to the President. Unlike six weeks earlier, Virginia was no longer a singular laboratory for views on the war.
Today, if different decisions had been made, Marines might be on maneuvers at Camp Pendleton and dating starlets on weekends. Instead, they are in Iraq trying to bring order and democracy to that benighted nation. Our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Coast Guardsmen are there, too. I believe that what politicians do, especially on issues of war and peace, matter to members of the armed forces. And that's why the Allen/Webb story ran in Proceedings.
One reader said that I had a conflict of interest because I didn't disclose that 11 years earlier I had written a book in which Mr. Webb had been one of five major figures. "Come clean, Mr. Timberg!" the reader scolded. I considered mentioning the book in October but several things argued against it. I hadn't seen Mr. Webb for the better part of a decade. We have exchanged emails from time to time, mostly saying, hey, we need to get together for lunch. We still haven't. Also, I didn't contribute to his campaign or attend any of his political functions.
There was another reason. Since I hadn't seen or talked at length with Mr. Webb for so long, the only reason I could think of for bringing up the issue would be to plug the book. That would have been inappropriate.
So there you are. I've come clean.