WashPost Goes Easy on Democrat Jim Webb's Pointed Women-in-Combat Writings

When the Washington Post first opened its big can of "macaca" on Sen. George Allen, the story was presented as if it wasn’t an opposition-research ploy from the Democratic campaign of Jim Webb. The headline was "Allen Quip Provokes Outrage, Apology." But on Thursday, when the Allen campaign revealed a whopper on Webb, the Post headline was "Va. Senate Race Goes Negative on 1979 Essay." Both articles were written by Michael Shear and Tim Craig. Thursday’s story opened:

Virginia's U.S. Senate race turned nasty Wednesday as Republican Sen. George Allen launched a character attack on his Democratic opponent's past views toward women in combat, signaling the start of a two-month barrage of negative campaigning in what has become a close race.

Allen, who is fighting for a second term, organized a news conference with five female U.S. Naval Academy graduates who said an article written 27 years ago by Allen's opponent, James Webb, prompted harassment by male midshipmen at the academy.

For a more passive telling of the Webb controversy, see AP's Bob Lewis. Back when "macaca" broke, Allen was also the central focus of the Post story:

"Virginia Sen. George Allen (R) apologized Monday for what his opponent's campaign said were demeaning and insensitive comments the senator made to a 20-year-old volunteer of Indian descent. At a campaign rally in southwest Virginia on Friday, Allen repeatedly called a volunteer for Democrat James Webb ‘macaca.’"

When the "macaca" story broke, the first expert consulted was political analyst Robert Holsworth, who predicted the remarks would not hurt Allen in Virginia, but might hurt in a bid for the presidency. Thursday's selected Post expert was employed to underline the sense that politics had suddenly gotten ugly:

"It's probably a good time to break out the Disney tapes for the kids, because the TV ads aren't going to be pretty," said Charlie Cook, an independent political analyst who edits the Cook Political Report. "Both these guys will do whatever it takes to win. Nobody's going to hold anything back."

There are conservatives who dislike the Allen tactic, arguing that Webb’s arguments against women in combat have merit. (See Kathryn Jean Lopez, for one.) But there’s no doubting that to readers of the Washington Post, and especially the hard-core liberal bloggers promoting Webb, this presents a serious problem. They look as if they’re supporting another alleged male chauvinist pig conservative instead of a progressive.

Ironically, the Allen campaign may have simply found the old article in The Washington Post. On July 9, Donna St. George wrote:

"That complaint grew louder in 1979, when Washingtonian magazine published an article, "Women Can't Fight," by James Webb, a much-heralded academy graduate and Marine war hero who is now the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Virginia. He wrote then that the presence of women poisoned the academy's mission and that the academy's massive dormitory was "a horny woman's dream."

Back on June 8, it also surfaced in a Robert Barnes article – as a "staple" for supporters of Webb’s more liberal Democratic primary opponent, Harris Miller:

A staple in the campaign against Webb is a 1979 article about the Naval Academy he wrote for the Washingtonian, "Women Can't Fight." It was a no-holds-barred attack on the decision to admit women to the academy, saying it "poisoned" the mission of developing combat leaders.

One of many passages recited by opponents: "I have never met a woman, including the dozens of female midshipmen I encountered during my recent semester as a professor at the Naval Academy, whom I would trust to provide those men with combat leadership."

 "I thought it was pathetic, an attack on women," says retired Army Lt. Gen. Claudia Kennedy, who has endorsed Miller. The article was particularly influential, she adds, because it was written at a time "when it was being actively debated whether women in the military could be leaders of men. It is something that today sounds archaic."

While the Post underlined that Webb's article came in that cobwebbed year of 1979, in the original "macaca" story, Shear and Craig did not note how antique some of their anti-Allen anecdotes were, including: "This year, the New Republic magazine published a photo of Allen wearing a Confederate flag on his lapel during high school." Allen graduated from high school in 1970.