President Bush: Meeting with Senator Jim Webb and his son, James R. Webb, U.S. Marine. Oval Office.
RELEASED TO: The Washington Post 020108
StaffPhoto imported to Merlin on Fri Feb 1 17:19:01 2008
How many people even know Jim Webb is running for president? If you missed that, don’t worry, it’s not important. In case you’re wondering, here’s his sorta-kinda position on Confederate flags:
South Carolina’s capitol grounds Confederate flag “long been due to come down,” but “he also called for some historical perspective on the issue, suggesting people should not use the debate over the flag to demonize the South.”
Despite calling Thursday (what took so long?) for the flag at the South Carolina Statehouse to come down, Webb’s first statement after the Charleston shooting didn’t take a clear position: “This is an emotional time, and we all need to think through these issues with a care that recognizes the need for change but also respects the complicated history of the Civil War. The Confederate Battle Flag has wrongly been used for racist and other purposes in recent decades. It should not be used in any way as a political symbol that divides us. But we should also remember that honorable Americans fought on both sides in the Civil War.”
More fence straddling: “The Confederate battle flag was a battle flag. It assumed a lot of unfortunate racist and divisionist overtones during the civil rights era. At the same time, I’ve been trying to reinforce that we need to remember two other parts of our history here. One is the very complex history of the Civil War itself.”
And rationalizing: “Only 5 percent of the white people in the South owned slaves. At the same time, there were four slave states that remained in the Union during the war.”
Sure sounds like a guy who’s trying to massage southern whites. Read the story here.
Meanwhile, congressional Republicans are fighting tooth-and-claw to keep Confederate flags flying at national cemeteries. Read that story here.