"Even hedged regrets are welcome, but the irony is that a Senator who says the parties need to work more together..."

"... will have as his main legacy the most partisan and polarizing legislation of modern times."

Had [Jim Webb] or any one of the 60 Democrats insisted that the Administration get Republican votes, or drop the bill's worst provisions, history would have been very different.

A second irony is that Democrats only had those 60 Senate votes because of a series of improbable and corrupt events. Mr. Webb won his race by a hair in 2006 after incumbent George Allen stupidly uttered the word "macaca," and the media portrayed him as racist. Alaska's Ted Stevens lost his seat in 2008 by 3,724 votes after he was convicted eight days before the election in a trial in which the Justice Department withheld crucial evidence. He was later exonerated. And Al Franken, who was trailing on Election Day, managed to steal the Minnesota recount in 2008 by 312 votes from a hapless Norm Coleman....

History... had you remembered those 3 incidents and the fact that all 3 were required to produce the 60 votes that allowed the Democrats to inflict Obamacare on us?

"I'm Todd Akin... Rape is an evil act. I used the wrong words in the wrong way and for that I apologize."

Can you find it in your heart to forgive him? If you forgive him, should you say, nevertheless: Get out, you're hurting your party right now, and it's a big distraction? It's a wrong irreparable in a short time span. Now, you've got until 5 p.m. to get out of the race.

It's like some cowboy movie: You've got until sundown to get out of Dodge.



Now, I think Akin should drop out. It's not fair for him to hold the spotlight, and he's hurt his entire party. From the party's point of view, every day that's about him — and the war-on-women topic rape — is a day that not about the economy and what Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan might do to save us from the depredations of the Democrats.

And yet... would the Democrats oust one of their own because he said one thing wrong? The GOP got played into destroying George Allen over the inane word "macaca." Democrats have their ways of disparaging Republicans for being racist/sexist/homophobe/whatever. It's not like they're going to stop. Each time they take a guy out it creates incentive to take another guy out. We can ruin X, like we ruined Allen and Akin.... It's a fun game... for them.

If Akin steps down, will takedowns like this continue?
	Yes, which is why he should stand his ground.
	Yes, but this one's too important, and he should step down.
	No, this is an unusual incident, not part of a series.
	No, the Democrats don't play the game Althouse describes in the post.
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"Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, has decided not to run for re-election..."

"...  avoiding a blockbuster rematch with the man he beat in 2006, George Allen, and giving Senate Republicans another opportunity to help them reclaim the majority."

Care to speculate on why Webb won't put up with a second electoral encounter with Allen?  Or should I say why he doesn't feel enough affinity for Senate Democrats to want to help them keep their numbers up?

"Last week, all humanity thrilled to the footage caught on a mall security camera of a walking-and-texting woman falling into a fountain."

"This week, the once-anonymous woman is doing an airing-of-grievances media blitz, complete with threats of legal action against those who made her hilarious klutziness an internet sensation."

Is there a cause of action for the invasion of privacy that takes place these days when someone catches something stupid that you do — in public — and puts it on YouTube? Hey, don't be stupid! The consequences are much higher today with the internet and viral video. It's a big deterrent. If the legal system turns that deterrent into a monetary gain, it will be incentivizing stupidity.

We need to learn how to live in the world as it is. When we're in public, we have a new dimension of visibility because of digital cameras and the internet. I've been thinking about the effect this is having on politics. Politicians have to watch every single thing they say. That's difficult.

Remember how one word uttered by George Allen destroyed him, because he foolishly thought he was speaking only to a small group and did not foresee how it would play on YouTube. Politicians will have to speak clearly, with a consistent message, and not something tailored to the particular group that they are speaking to at the moment. Obama was able to overcome his "bitter clingers" remark, which was specially designed to reach the hearts of wealthy San Franciscans. But it wasn't easy, and it still dogs him.

Heads up, everybody. Don't stare at the one thing that's right in front of your nose — whether it's your Blackberry or your biggest, wealthiest fans. Pay attention. There's a low wall just ahead, you're about to tumble into the fountain, and the internet is waiting to make you the next sensation.

"The sad fate of George Allen's A-list advisers."

From TNR. Poor Ed Gillespie:

[CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let me ask you this. The macaca thing, I think that's what started all this. ...

How do you explain that? Coming up with a word used as an anti-black term in North Africa years ago. ... He just made up a word that we know can be traced back to North Africa where his mother came from? Do you believe that, that he just made up the word macaca out of nowhere?

GILLESPIE: Well I know that he calls his finance director Jabba. I don't know why, and I don't know where that comes from.

MATTHEWS: Jabba the Hut.

Poor Mary Matalin:

TUCKER CARLSON: Wait a second, Mary. ... [T]he Allen campaign has beat Jim Webb over the head with this piece he wrote. ...

MATALIN: ... [W]hat was offensive about that was the language that was used. You know me, Tucker--I am no raving feminist here. But any man that ever says, in any context, or professes to know something about any woman's horny dreams, is not somebody that I want representing me or even in the same room with me.

Ouch.

Fiction and politics.

In the Virginia Senate race, George Allen wanted us to see his opponent Jim Webb as some sort of deviant because of some images and characters he'd put in his novels. This inspires Victor Davis Hanson to muse about fiction and politics:

In this age of global, instant and technologically sophisticated communications, we are often left bewildered over what is true and what is made up. Cute postmodern sophistries asserting that ''there are no facts'' only make our confusion worse.

When Reuters published doctored photos from the recent war in Lebanon, unknowingly or not, they were disseminating computer-enhanced graphic art. That dark smoky sky over Beirut was not real photography. Recent journalistic exposés of the Iraqi war, such as Bob Woodward's State of Denial, might have been mistaken for histories. They aren't, since their footnotes reference the reader to anonymous sources that can't be verified.

And the problem isn't just that we are led to believe a film or book must be ''true'' when it is sometimes not. It's also that we often deliberately want to make something real that was never intended to be. Fury arose recently over the fictionalized docudrama ''The Path to 9/11.'' The charge was that it was not an accurate rendition of history, even though ABC issued multiple warnings of its fictionalized nature across our television screens.

And now we are supposed to believe that an imaginary story - and that is what a novel is - must be an accurate moral litmus test of its creator?

Hanson raises the question only to drop it. And he frames the question to make it more likely that we'll drop it too.

I wouldn't ask whether a novel is "an accurate moral litmus test" of its author, but whether it is useful evidence relevant to a question we want to think about. In the case of a political candidate who has written a novel, it might give us something to take into account even though it's not a specific and accurate test.

George Allen had an idea about the way to use his opponent's novels, but it wasn't a very good idea. The material wasn't strong enough to persuade us to think ill of Webb. In fact, it improved my opinion of Webb to learn that he'd written respectable novels and to see that he was an intelligent and thoughtful person who'd taken the time to think through his military experiences in the artist's mode. It also made me notice his military experience. And Allen ended up looking bad for extracting the sexy parts and making arguments that those passages did not support.

But we might imagine another case where a political candidate wrote novels that were quite bad and revealed shallow thinking and morbid obsessions and the opponent made crisp, fair arguments that helped us think about what kind of a person the author is.

We need to become adept at dealing with different kinds of materials, none of which are entirely true. Even an undoctored photograph frames a shot and represents the photographer's decision about what to include and exclude. Even a fully professional history or journalistic report structures the presentation and imposes editorial choice. We have wake up and think actively about how the creator of any image or text is trying to influence us, whether it's presented as fact, fiction, or something in between. And anything anyone makes says something about the person who made it. The trick is to get good at evaluating what it means and to become equally sensitive at detecting the distortions and manipulations of those who try to tell you how to evaluate it.

"If you want to read about attitudes toward females..."

So it's finally arrived! The day when we scour the files of political candidates for evidence about their attitudes toward females! And may the least sexist candidate win!

In one corner, we have a man who has written novels -- gasp! novels! -- that lack any strong female characters! In the other, we have a man who has a sister who's written a memoir -- oh, no! a memoir! get me Oprah! -- in which she tattles that he pulled her hair!

In its latest attack, the [George] Allen camp takes particular issue with the portrayal of women in [Jim] Webb’s novels, saying female characters are consistently “servile, subordinate, inept, incompetent, promiscuous, perverted, or some combination of these.”

And:

Mr. Webb ... attacked Mr. Allen personally. “You ought to read what George Allen’s sister wrote about him if you want to read about attitudes toward females,” he said, alluding to an autobiography by Jennifer Allen in which she describes her brother as a bully who once dragged her upstairs by her hair because she had defied her father at bedtime.

Oh, come on, Althouse. Get the story straight! It's not a memoir, it's an autobiography. And he didn't just pull her hair, he dragged her up the stairs by her hair -- the caveman! -- because she defied her father -- the patriarch!

Well, who is this Jennifer Allen character that she merits an "autobiography"? It looks like a memoir to me. She tells the story of growing up with that patriarch, who was a "legendary" football coach and, apparently, a mean daddy. Too bad Amazon doesn't have a search-inside-the-book function for that one, because we could find all the references to brother George and quote them -- in or out of context, as suits our fancy.

But come on, let's not stop with Webb and Allen. It's time to dig in. I want to know about all the male candidates. Who respects women more?

And all you guys who are hoping to make it in politics, who are burnishing your credentials right now? Better make sure you show nothing but respect from now on. Better go crawling on your knees to any woman you ever disrespected, lest she dash off a memoir. Bonus political tip: Hire a ghostwriter to write a novel full of upright, feisty females.

ADDED: From Maureen Dowd's TimesSelect column:

Mr. Allen’s younger sister, Jennifer, wrote a memoir in which she described her brother pulling a Michael Jackson and dangling her over a railing at Niagara Falls, and slamming a pool cue against her boyfriend’s head. (She later said the pool-cue story was a joke, calling the book a novelization of the past.)

So it's that kind of memoir.

Judging a candidate by his fiction writing.

George Allen attacks Jim Webb for the tawdriness in his novels. The stuff is rather awful, but it does seem lame to go after fiction. Politicians who dabble in fiction writing usually throw in sex scenes, and these things nearly always look ridiculous out of context. But do the desire to write a sex scene and the failure to do a very good job of it say anything about a person's competence as a legislator? Maybe there's a shred of information in there with all the salaciousness. And it does provide the occasion to remind us of other bad sex written by politicians, like that dreadful thing Scooter Libby wrote about bears.

ADDED: Jim Webb's writing career is clearly more substantial than the usual "[p]oliticians who dabble in fiction writing." And the line involving the father and son -- shown out of context at the link -- is not part of a sexually titillating scene as I discovered by going to Amazon and use the search-inside-the-book function to see the line in context. Click on the comments for more discussion.

UPDATE: Webb explains the scene:

"It's not a sexual act," Webb told [radio host Mark] Plotkin regarding the "Lost Soldiers" excerpt. "I actually saw this happen in a slum in Bangkok when I was there as a journalist."

"The duty of a writer is to illuminate his surroundings," he added.

Coincidentally, a Cambodian woman in Las Vegas is facing sexual assault charges for performing a similar act on her young son, according to an Oct. 14 report in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The article quotes an office manager for the Cambodian Association of America, who described the act as a sign of respect or love.

"It's an exception," Thira Srey told the Review-Journal of the practice. According to the report, the act is usually performed by a mother or caretaker on a child who is one year old or younger. In Webb's novel, the child is four years old.