COCK OF THE WALK

It will a long while before Barack Obama selects his running mate, though the speculation is already running wild. The current fad, more robust and long-lasting than most, is that Obama should balance his ticket with a white male who is well to his right. Someone like Virginia Senator, ex-Reaganite, former Navy Secretary Jim Webb.

A number of assumptions, all of them dubious, are embedded in this argument.

First is a belief, stoked by the right, but also by a number of Hillary-ites, that Obama is effeminate and that he needs to have a manly man at his side--"a real man's man full of anger and testosterone." The argument goes that Obama can innoculate himself against charges of elitism by choosing a tough guy who can appeal to America's auto mechanics and firefighters.

Second is the related argument, one that has circulated in Democratic circles since the early 1970s, that liberals will only win if they attract alienated white men back into their fold. The meme began with the 1970 hard hat riots and continued through Reagan Democrats and NASCAR dads. All of them, the argument went, could be won over to a ticket that included a tough guy. Frankly, I don't think that the performative masculinity of the VP candidate matters much. If it did, why did the GOP pick George H.W. or Dan Quayle, neither of whom were the belly-scratching, beer swilling types. And Dick Cheney might be a good duck hunting companion, so long as you stand behind him, but he's too sour and reclusive to appeal to anyone other than Haliburton executives and wingnuts. And the tough-as-nails Lloyd Bentsen was not enough to redeem Michael Dukakis.

Third is the post-9/11 argument that the United States needs to project a tough, masculine face to the world in service of the war on terror. A confident, swaggering America will strike fear in the heart of our foes. Counter-argument: we've have George W. "Mission Accomplished" Bush in office for the last seven and a half years and his bravado has only stoked the flames of resentment among our allies and our enemies alike. Alas, chest thumping is not strongly correlated with effective diplomacy. Recasting America as Marlboro Man makes for good photo ops, but not effective alliance building.

But the outcome of the Democratic caucuses and primaries suggests something quite different. It's the need to win over women voters. Obama has been doing quite well among male voters, but he has been struggling to win the support of women. Current polls show Obama still struggling to gain the support of Democratic women. And national match-ups show that a sizeable percentage of white women voters support McCain over Obama. A recent Gallup poll found that "Obama loses to McCain by nine points among white women, while Clinton wins by three points. Clinton does better than Obama among both blue-collar and white-collar white women." Other polls show Obama doing better among women, but he can't afford to take their votes for granted.

Democratic women have gravitated toward Hilary for a number of reasons, in part as a reaction to misogyny directed toward her, in part because Hilary has addressed head-on many of the concerns of women voters with specific recommendations rather than high-minded rhetoric. Perhaps most important is the deep but mostly unnoticed strain of blue-collar feminism that explains much of the bitterness of Rustbelt women voters and their attraction to a strong woman like Hillary.

I am a skeptic of Hillary and of the Clintons for many reasons--and remain to be convinced that she should be on Obama's ticket. But it's in Obama's interest to look for a veep candidate who will appeal to women voters, whether it is a man or woman. (There are good arguments for picking a woman candidate). In 2000, women voters split more or less evenly between Bush and Gore, but in 2004, they went decisively for W. Obama and the Democrats will get some of them back, but they need to widen the gender gap as far as they can. It is unlikely that women voters are going to be seduced by Webb's macho, Tailhook-attending, antifeminist, cock-of-the-walk style.

THE GI BILL AND OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN

The Senate recently passed an updated GI Bill, sponsored by Dem veep candidate du jour Jim Webb. (I have grave concerns about Webb on the ticket, but I'll send you here for now and spare you my thoughts today). There is a raging debate about the effects of the GI Bill on military recruitment and retention. Its GOP foes, including John McCain, argue that providing educational benefits will lead some soldiers to decide (quite sensibly, in my opinion) not to reenlist. But other analysts contend that the payoff of the benefit will actually assist the military in recruitment.

But as I see it, the debate fundamentally misses the point. The all-volunteer military is one of the most inequitable institutions in American life. Why? Because it puts the burden of military service on those with the fewest resources and limited job opportunities. Not surprisingly, many military men and women come from the hardest-hit Rustbelt towns, from inner cities, and from down-at-the-heels rural areas.

Back when I was a teenager, I opposed the draft (which was not in place at the time) and the Carter administration's introduction of mandatory draft registration. My position was principled: it grew out of my youthful libertarianism (I've grown out of it) and my opposition to Reagan-era foreign policy (a position that I still hold). I was, in large part, wrong, even if my reasons were usually right.

It is an unpopular position in the circles in which I travel, but I think it's the only just one: to require universal service, with a non-military public service option for conscientious objectors. Here are my reasons.

First and foremost: It is unfair for the least advantaged to bear the greatest burdens in service to the country. To be sure, in nearly every period of history (most notably during the Vietnam War), the well-heeled and well-connected have found all sorts of ways of passing the burden to the poor and working-class. Historian Christian Appy's book, Working-Class War, is a powerful reminder of the costs that blue-collar Americans bore in the debacle in Southeast Asia. Appy points out that, in contrast to World War II and Korea, 80 percent of those who served in Vietnam came from blue-collar or poor families.

Second: Service to society will play a small, but not inconsequential, role in fostering a sense of collective responsibility among young people. Right now, that sense of commonality is sorely lacking, especially among the best-off Americans who have spent most of the last forty years steadily withdrawing from the public sector. To be sure there are glimmers of hope. Over the last decade, I have witnessed a massive growth in "community service" programs at my university and elsewhere. These programs are a starting point, even if most students see service primarily as a vehicle for self-improvement or credentialing. It allows them to rationalize their privilege, to engage in paternalistic forms of uplift, and, in the process to pad the resume. Don't get me wrong: I'm not opposed to community service programs, if they are well-organized and involve more than superficial, feel-good, condescending programs. But we need more.

Third: A broader base of service in the military will give more Americans a stake in the outcome of wars. The intense antiwar movement during the 1960s was fueled, in large part, by the immediacy of the draft. Hundreds of thousands of students marched against the war because they knew that their lives--or the lives of their brothers, husbands, lovers, sons, friends--were at stake. No more. Hardly any of my students know even a single person who has been stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan. And even fewer know anyone who was injured or died there.

There is a great scene in Michael Moore's film, Fahrenheit 911, when the Rustbelt-born filmmaker asks members of Congress whether or not they would send their children to fight in Iraq. Most of them stammered or looked at Moore like he was crazy. But they had few compunctions about sending other people's children into harm's way. Perhaps they would have done that anyway--certainly the past offers many grim examples of chicken hawks willing to sacrifice others for their own delusions.

Universal service will be no panacea, but it's better than what we have in place now.