This is a verrrry interesting interview (click on image to read it or see blockquoted excerpt below), especially given the "incoming" on his own writings Webb took from George Allen in 2006. Of course, most of those attacks were completely ridiculous, for instance calling Webb's critically acclaimed fictional works on the Vietnam War "pedophilia" and the like. On the other hand, Allen's attacks on Webb's past writings regarding public policy issues (e.g., women in the military) were fair game, which is why Webb made it clear at the time that he had changed his views and had acted accordingly (e.g., opening up more operational billets to women than any Secretary of Navy in history).
In contrast, in this election, Bob McDonnell has never refuted his thesis, nor did he vote in a way that would contradict the thesis when he was a member of the General Assembly. So why would the thesis not be an issue in this campaign, except that McDonnell knows it hurts him politically and wishes the whole thing would go away? (of course, McDonnell's the one who brought it up with a Washington Post reporter; if he hadn't, none of us would even know about it - d'oh!)
“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.”
[...]
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.
