The following exchange took place on the eve of the FISA vote, July 8th, between myself and Virginia Senator James Webb. You can listen to this exchange at The Seminal.
All emphasis is mine.
Josh Nelson: You mentioned the role the blogosphere played in your Senate campaign. I was wondering if you could elaborate on that a little bit. And also tell us what type of role you would like to see them play in legislative fights in the future.
Jim Webb: The blogs... the good news and bad news about blogs. First the bad news. The bad news is anybody can say anything about someone and they don’t even have to put their name on it. In fact, the anonymity encourages irresponsibility. And it is pretty frustrating, I’ll be honest with you, that’s why I just stopped reading this stuff a long time ago.
The good is, when there are allegations made, in any variety of formats, there are people who know the facts, and step forward, and correct the facts. People who put their name on it and correct. We had, from day one we had strong support from people in the blogging community. In fact, I wasn’t even sure I was going to run for office. After Katrina, I went up and saw my friend Bob Kerrey, the guy who told me that Moynihan wrote 17 books. And talked to him for the first time about the mechanics of running. I’d obviously been involved in political commentary for a very long time. In listening to Bob Kerrey I sort of thought I was going to do it and then I looked at what it would take to raise the money and all the rest of this and I wasn’t sure. There were people in the blogging community who heard that I was thinking about running and on their own they started a draft Webb for Senate campaign. They got 1,000 signatures on this, they came over and saw me, I spent an hour and a half talking with them. And you know that was a big part in terms of convincing me that yea well maybe I oughtta step forward and do this.
With respect to legislation, what I, I think the blogs really communicate, in a very intelligent way, on a couple of these really complicated issues, I would hope they wouldn’t lock themselves into positions so early, uh, there’s some really complex pieces of legislation that kind of get boiled down...
Josh Nelson: Are you talking about FISA?
Jim Webb: Specifically I’m thinking about FISA since I have to vote on it tomorrow afternoon.
(laughter)
That’s a very complicated issue and I’ve looked at it from every single angle that it can be looked at. Having had the black clearances that we were talking about, and at the same time I’m very strong on privacy rights. It’s not an issue that is easy to boil down in the way a lot of the blogging community has boiled it down.