But suggesting that Webb would be a token VP is to misunderstand the man (h/t Ezra Klein) and minimize his other virtues.

But back to Obama. My sense is that Obama is fully prepared to take the initiative across the board on national security–is fully prepared, in short, to rebut the usual calumnies from the Right.

But can’t Obama both take this intellectual initiative AND choose Webb as VP as part of a larger political vision for the Democratic party?

My strongest argument for Webb, in short, is not that he provides national security street cred–although he certainly does that–but that Webb can speak an economically populist, culturally apt language to voters whom the Dems have been hemorrhaging since the Civil Rights Act was passed.

It certainly didn’t help the Democrats in 1972 and 1984. They would have lost both anyway, but maybe not by such huge margins. It definitely mattered in 1960, but that was somewhat unusual. These selections tend not to matter if they’re done well, but they can be a drag on a ticket if the wrong person is brought on board. We keep talking about VP selections as if they were assets, when we should be thinking of them as possible embarrassments. They add little or nothing, but they can take away a significant amount. If they’re competent, on-message and qualified, they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing, and if they aren’t one of those things they are distractions and burdens.

As for the question of overthinking, I probably am overthinking this matter. Arguably, any thought about VP selections is too much, but it’s what we do. If they concede the point on national security and accept a definition that automatically puts them on the defensive for the entire campaign, they lose. Once Obama is seen to admit, “Yes, I am weak on national security,” and allows his positions to be identified with *weakness* he has consented to play the game according to rules that will prevent him from winning. You don’t “pretend it isn’t there.” You take the initiative and insist that you have a better understanding of national security policy. The Democrats have to stop the military tokenism if they ever want to be able to persuade anyone that they have the better policies. Tokenism sends a signal that you have no credibility on the relevant issues and that you’re trying to make up for it with symbolism. If the Democratic nominee cannot claim that he has a better record on national security after eight years of George Bush, it will never happen. The only way to get out of a defensive crouch is to stand up, and the idea that they are contemplating picking Webb or Nunn tells me that they don’t know how to stand up yet.

Regarding your pretty consistent objection to Webb as VP that he’d only validate the right’s misgivings about the likely Dem nominee, my sense is that you’re overthinking the matter. Disclosure: I’m a Webb enthusiast and a big fan, btw, of David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed, a cultural history of the four British subcultures in North American. (Webb wrote a fine book on one of these subgroups, the Scots-Irish–or Ulster Scots, in his Born Fighting.)

Anyway, Fischer makes the memorable point that most US presidents have been of Scots-Irish descent, reflecting Americans’ cultural default in the voting booth to what they view as the quintessentially American frontier ethic espoused by this subgroup, which does produce its own elites like Andrew Jackson and Jim Webb. George Bush, scion of Yankees (another subgroup), picked up politically useful back-country affectations while sojourning in Midland, Texas, thus basically ensuring him the presidency.

My point? Given his half-African ancestry, Obama can’t pull off the same necessary sleight of hand. Although by all reports, Obama has been able to adapt rather well in other settings and to connect rather effortlessly with a range of people, from multicultural Hawaii to Indonesia, to college in California then Columbia and finally Harvard and the south side of Chicago to Iowa and so on. But passing as Scots-Irish in the uplands of Alabama is, of course, a bridge too far.

Enter Webb, who can take that bridge for Obama. Sebelius can’t. Napolitano can’t. Hagel and Blooomberg can’t. Daschle can’t. Edwards can’t.

Will Webb convert everyone? Nope. Webb won’t win the haters or other intractable types. But imho he will convert those in Appalachia who long for change but are afraid of change that looks like Obama.

As to your larger point that putting forth Webb concedes the right’s point. Well, yes. So concede it already and anticipate it and answer it, for god’s sake. Don’t pretend it isn’t there.

To the extent that mass democracy has its own logic, this selection would be consistent with it.