New Star for the Democrats

He may have been Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Navy, but Jim Webb, the new Democratic Senator from Virginia, is emerging as one of the stars of the new Democratic Congress.

He gave the reply to Bush's State of the Union's address last night. Apparently he rewrote the original script prepared by the standard Democratic Party wordsmiths. The authenticity shows.

It should be watched or read here.

The response by Newsweek captures the zeitgeist:

Something unprecedented happened tonight, beyond the doorkeeper announcing, "Madame Speaker." For the first time ever, the response to the State of the Union Message overshadowed the president's big speech. Virginia Sen. James Webb, in office only three weeks, ... left President Bush's ordinary address in the dust. In the past, the Democratic response has been anemic... This time it pointed the way to a revival for national Democrats.

As for the speech itself, it contained the usual quota of Bush's, ahem, nosestretchers. All well documented here.

The result of all this for Bush is that his popularity is comparable only to that of Richard Nixon just before he delivered his last State of the Union Address in the middle of the Watergate Scandal.