With lawmakers like Virigina Sen. Jim Webb (D) now starting to lead the fight on drug policy and criminal justice reform, it will be much harder for the GOP to use the "weakness" canard. Webb, thanks to his military background and gruff style, just doesn't fit that stereotype...at all. And while I'm uncomfortable with politics automatically ascribing extra credibility and "toughness" to anyone with military experience regardless of what they are pushing, I'm thrilled that that oversimplistic framing will actually help the cause of drug/criminal justice reform, thanks to Webb.
I basically agree. It's really fucking stupid and lame to do this, but it's almost a necessary evil. You can't have Obama (as Senator or President) taking the reins on this; somewhere, some idiot talking head will infer or flat-out say that he's just "helpin' his niggaz out." And then it becomes a racial debate and the thing goes down in flames. So instead you get Jim Webb, who's stout, gruff, tough, beer-swilling, and working-class (yes, Senators can still be working-class!), and this all makes for a good person to present a bill that, in shortened form, says: stop locking up all these fucking weed dealers.
It should be noted that Sirota is right on another point; namely, that this argument is made all the time. See Tom Friedman here, a few weeks ago, innocently making the same appeal to military authority:
The Obama administration’s carbon tax spokesman — the one who should sell this to the country — should be the president’s national security adviser, Gen. James Jones, not the environmentalists. The imposing former head of the Marine Corps could make a powerful case that a carbon tax is vitally necessary to stimulate investments in the clean technologies that would enable the U.S. to dominate E.T., while also shifting consumers to buy these new, more efficient and cleaner power systems, homes and cars.
Shorter Tom Friedman: Al Gore and his faggy vice-presidency, his gay Harvard education, and his pansy-ass Nobel Prize didn't help sell Americans on jackshit, so we're calling in somebody who's actually killed other people.
