The American Spectator

p> STINGS LIKE A DRONE br> Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s The Gentleman From Virginia : /p>

Thanks for more on the Gentleman From Virginia. “Tempted to slug him…” was he? How I wish he had tried. President Bush probably would have decked him faster than you can say “glass jaw.”

I read a lot and remember a little of it. In The Nightingale’s Song enough of Jim Webb’s boxing career was high-lighted to give one a pretty good idea of his character. When he faced Oliver North in the ring at Annapolis, he whined that he lost it because he was afraid he was going to hurt North. Webb’s claim was that the coach favored North and tutored him on what to expect from Webb. My question is, why would anyone climb into a ring, fearing they are going to hurt the person they are fighting? North cleaned his clock on points. And, how’s this for Sore Loser, Webb ambushed the coach next day, for a little post-bout pouting. Coach Smith said Webb was the only midshipman he had had words with in twenty-seven years.

p>All of this puts me in mind of John Kerry and the ski slope — “I don’t fall down, that s.o.b. got in my way…” Another thin-skinned loser. I love it. br> — Diane Smith br> South San Francisco, California /p>

It appears that Jim Webb has joined the ranks of what I term “Retroactively Tough-Guy Democrats.” The main characteristic of this group is the assertion, always after the fact, that the person so afflicted was really, really angry in a given situation, and he or she was just able to defuse such fury in the nick of time. A variation of this is the glorious “You-May-Not-Remember-Because-It-Never-Happened-But-I-Was-So-Tough-On-(fill in the blank)” Assertion.

In the last decade, we were told by a Clinton flunky that the President had considered punching a critic of Hillary in the nose. Last year, the esteemed teenaged senator from Louisiana, Mary Landrieu, threatened that she would have physically attacked any politician, including President Bush, who had questioned the post-Katrina mess. Bill Clinton was on TV angrily telling Chris Wallace that he had “tried” to capture or kill Osama. Al Gore confidently asserts that if he had been elected in 2000, his response to September 11 would have been so much bolder than Bush’s, and that he would have avoided war in Iraq. Next thing you know, Walter Mondale will reveal that he was just moments away from taking a swing at Reagan after the Gipper’s classic vow to refrain from making his opponent’s age an issue in the 1984 campaign!