Despite facing similar attacks, Webb says McDonnell’s thesis should be used

Virginia Sen. Jim Webb (D) says a two-decades-old academic thesis is fair game for political attack in his home state’s contentious gubernatorial race.
 
Webb accused Republicans of trying to smear him when they dredged up his old writings during his 2006 senatorial campaign but he says this time it’s different.
 

At issue is a master’s thesis that Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell wrote at Regent University more than 20 years ago when he was a 34-year-old graduate student.
 
“What McDonnell wrote was essentially a political manifesto that he wrote two years before running for office,” Webb said in an interview. “It’s directly relevant to what his philosophy is in terms of governance.”
 
McDonnell’s Democratic opponent, Creigh Deeds, has made the work a major issue of the campaign. In the 93-page academic paper from 1989, McDonnell describes working women and feminists as having a “detrimental” impact on families and argues that government policies should favor married couples over “co-habitators, homosexuals and fornicators.”
 
McDonnell also criticized a Supreme Court decision allowing the use of birth control by unwed couples.
 
Webb believes this is relevant to the governor’s race because McDonnell wrote it two years before he ran for the state’s general assembly. The paper included an action plan for the GOP to adopt to bolster traditional family values.
 
McDonnell says his views have since changed. Meanwhile, his campaign has blasted back at Deeds, calling his tactics “negative, decisive and backwards-looking.” 
 
Webb knows something of such controversies. During his 2006 senatorial race, his opponent, former Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), made Webb’s decades-old writings a major issue.
 
Allen highlighted an article Webb wrote in 1979 for Washingtonian magazine that argued against letting women serve in combat or attend the military academies. Among other controversial statements, Webb wrote: “No benefit to anyone can come from women serving in combat” and “their presence at institutions dedicated to the preparation of men for combat command is poisoning that preparation.”
 
Allen also made an issue of novels Webb wrote based on his service as a Marine officer in Vietnam, such as “Fields of Fire,” “Something to Die For,” and “Lost Soldiers,” written in 1978, 1992, and 2002, respectively. Webb was 32 when “Fields of Fire” was published.
 
Allen blasted Webb for penning graphic sexual scenes, claiming that Webb’s work was demeaning to women.
 
Webb said that Allen’s use of old writings in the 2006 senatorial campaign was completely different from Deeds' efforts to close a gap with McDonnell by attacking his Regent University thesis.
 
“What they did in my situation was basically character assassination,” said Webb, referring to attacks based on his fiction writings. “I’m very proud of my literary career. ‘Fields of Fire’ was the most taught piece of American literature in college courses on the Vietnam War for years.
 
“They were taking small excerpts from novels and attempting to use them to characterize me,” he said of Allen’s campaign, contrasting it with what Deeds has done. “And I think that was totally distinct from what we’re talking about with respect to this situation.”
 
McDonnell’s aides, however, say that Deeds has used the same tactic.
 
“That’s exactly what Democrats are doing to Bob’s thesis,” said McDonnell spokeswoman Stacey Johnson. “They are taking a few paragraphs out of a 93-page academic exercise totally out of context.”
 
While Webb has defended sexually explicit passages in his literary works, calling them an observations of the way humans live, he has apologized for his old stance on barring women from the service academies. During the 2006 campaign, Webb said he was profoundly sorry for any hardship that his article may have caused to women at the academies or in the armed services. 
 
Webb said he has talked to Deeds about his race but not discussed the use of McDonnell’s thesis as campaign talking point.
 
Deeds has trailed by a steady margin of five to ten points over the past few months. A Washington Post poll from early October showed him behind by nine points.
 
The election will take place on Nov. 3.