Observations

Is It Too Late For a Recount?

I am embarrassed by the boorish actions of the newly elected Senator from my state, Virginia, who behaved like an adolescent in one of his first public appearances since barely winning the November 7^th election over incumbent George Allen by less than one percent. James M. Webb shunned the President of the United States in a formal gathering recently in honor of newly elected Representatives and Senators, by avoiding the receiving line, and refusing to have his picture taken with the President. I don’t care who you are, how you voted, or how screwed up your thinking is, that is poor form.

Worse, when President Bush approached Mr. Webb and asked about his son, who is in the military and serving in Iraq, Mr. Webb insolently replied, “That’s between me and my boy.”

Mr. Webb is not the only small person that doesn’t know how to behave in polite company, of course; there are legions of them these days. But he is an elected representative of the people of Virginia, where good manners are still widely practiced, and he owes them a better public face than that. I’m very unhappy that Commonwealth voters chose someone with such an apparent absence of class. I’m betting that if the good people of Virginia had any idea that Mr. Webb would behave so boorishly, George Allen would have been reelected.

Is it too late for a recount?