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Obama lauded Webb for pushing the new GI Bill, touted his leadership in the Senate, and commended his hard work.

Obama said, "Looking forward, I can be proud to be fighting with him, alongside him." He added, "Let me tell you something, if you're in a fight -- and we're gonna be in a fight -- you want Jim Webb to have your back."

AFTER THE EVENT, I spoke to a number of attendees who were waiting in their seats until the parking lot traffic subsided. They were all energized by Obama, and had a generally good impression of Webb, but there were mixed sentiments as to whether he would make a good vice-presidential candidate.

Jacquese Pompey of Sterling said she thought an Obama-Webb ticket would be an "excellent idea."

"He's not as powerful of a speaker as Obama as far as encouraging the crowd and getting everybody going, but he's good," Pompey said.

Jerry Pender of Centreville thought Webb would theoretically be a good choice for vice president, but was iffy on the idea out of concern that Democrats would lose a Senate seat.

Others were ambivalent.

"When you think of a Jim Webb, somebody who was a veteran of service and a guy who has a reputation of being a fighter, if he was on the ticket, [Republicans] could no longer say Obama is just a soft guy who would sit around appeasing other countries," Reginald Williams of Suitland, Md., told me. But he still wasn't sold on the idea. "Webb, for some folks, he has that persona of being a bull in the china shop, and I don't know if that's a good thing for Obama to have on his ticket."

topics:
John McCain, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Law, Iraq, NATO, Oil