July 7, 2015
By Lloyd Grove
Scots-Irish fighting man Jim Webb
In a recent book, a former aide to the Democratic presidential contender recalls a belligerent, pugnacious egomaniac who boasted of a violent dustup with a biker.
Former Virginia senator Jim Webb, the latest White House hopeful to enter the Democratic nomination race and challenge 2016 frontrunner Hillary Clinton, would seem at first blush an attractive candidate for Leader of the Free World.
A centrist Democrat and economic populist, Webb, 69, served a single six-year term in the Senate during George W. Bush’s and Barack Obama’s presidencies before leaving politics to think and write; he was a member of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees and opposed the American military adventures in Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere.
A true citizen-politician, he was also a highly decorated Marine first lieutenant during the Vietnam War—awarded a Navy Cross for heroism in combat—as well as a secretary of the Navy during Ronald Reagan’s administration; and if all that were not enough, Webb is also a critically acclaimed, best-selling author, whose 1978 war novel, Fields of Fire, sold a million copies and was adapted for a Hollywood epic.
And yet.
A little-known recent book by former Pentagon official Chase Untermeyer, Inside Reagan’s Navy, presents Webb as a pugnacious egomaniac with a streak of male chauvinism, a boulder-sized chip on his shoulder, and zero sense of humor about himself.
Jew tattle-tale Chase Untermeyer
Untermeyer recounts a session in Webb’s private office, during which the Navy secretary reminisced about a long-ago violent dustup with a ponytailed biker.
“I had him by the hair and was beating his head on the sidewalk when he suddenly went limp on me,” Webb recounted. “Then it came to me: I had killed the fucking son of a bitch, and I would be put on report back at the Academy! So I revived him—whereupon he came to and kicked me in the head about 10 times till I was able to grab his leg... Moral: Show no mercy in a fight.”
In response to the revelations in Untermeyer’s book, a Webb campaign spokesman emailed The Daily Beast on Tuesday: “Senator Webb recalls Mr. Untermeyer as a capable assistant and an engaging conversationalist. As a rule, though, he does not comment on private conversations. In a letter to Sen. Webb dated March 12, 2015--as in his book--Mr. Untermeyer wrote, ‘To my view, you are the outstanding American of my generation.’”
Another anecdote—from a book that was published by the academic Texas A&M University Press in March and has received far less attention than it deserves—documents Webb’s insistence on staging his elaborate 1987 installation ceremony at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, smack-dab in the middle of exam week.
Webb, an Annapolis alum, had briefly taught at the Academy in 1979 as a writer in residence, but was bounced from the faculty after making politically incorrect comments concerning women serving in the military. (He was against it.)
“I revived him—whereupon he came to and kicked me in the head about 10 times till I was able to grab his leg... Moral: Show no mercy in a fight.”
Untermeyer quotes General P.X. Kelley, then commandant of the Marine Corps, as encountering a “Marine-option midshipman” who “pleaded with him to get ‘the coronation of King James’ switched from Exam Week.”
Untermeyer continues: “When P.X. carried this message to Webb, Jim’s eyes narrowed, and he said, ‘Those bastards kept me off the campus of my own alma mater for three years, and I’m going to make them suffer.’”
Of course, “the ‘bastards’ in question were long gone,” Untermeyer writes, “and the sufferers were the poor middies who had to participate in the ceremony. Barbara Kelley [the commandant’s wife] said succinctly: ‘The jackass.’”
Arguably these are not qualities that one would necessarily seek in a future president, although Untermeyer also claims to like and admire Webb.
Joking with Webb’s predecessor John Lehman—a man who did show a sense of humor about himself—Untermeyer claimed to see similarities between the two Navy secretaries. Untermeyer told Lehman that Webb was “a temperamental genius—and we all know what it’s like to live with one of those.”
Untermeyer writes: “Jim loves a fight. But whereas with John, fighting and beating your enemies is sport, with Jim, it’s blood sport.”
Untermeyer, who in a former life was a political reporter for The Houston Chronicle and then an elected state representative in the Texas legislature—and later an administrative assistant to Vice President George H.W. Bush, and U.S. ambassador to Qatar—muses in his journal: “Jim has so apotheosized his life as an epic of American courage and spirit that any criticism (or perceived criticism) is akin to sacrilege or even treason.”
As deputy assistant secretary for installations and facilities, and then as assistant secretary for manpower and reserve affairs, Untermeyer, now 69, worked intimately with Webb in the Navy Department, and kept a meticulous journal of his close encounters; Untermeyer was so faithful a diarist that Webb once ordered him during a particularly sensitive meeting (on the then-troublesome issue of women in the Navy): “Chase, stop taking notes.”...
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