Senator Jim Webb on CNN's "State of the Union with John King"

John King:  Sixteen newsmakers, analysts and reporters were out on the Sunday morning talk shows today, but only one gets "The Last Word." That honor today goes to Democratic Senator Jim Webb of Virginia. Welcome to State of the Union.

I want to start where I left off in the health care debate, the debate on the public option.  Should it be an opt-in for states, an opt-out for states?  Should we wait and have a trigger? What kind of a public option, if any, can get Jim Webb's support?

Senator Webb:  Well, I think Ben Nelson has the classic quote that it's very difficult to talk about one part of this unless you see it all in total and that's been the difficulty since day one.

It's something that I actually said to the White House more than four months ago, that they should have come down with a very clear template in terms of what they were expecting.

From that, we should have had hearings and then the Congress should have legislated.  And having done it the reverse way with the five different bills percolating up through the committees, it's really difficult to see even what we are voting for.

And with respect to the insurance programs, I think the real focus, and Sherrod Brown touched on it, is what has happened to the profit margins in private insurance over the last 20 years because they've been really off the charts.

So if we're opening up the client base, so to speak, even though we're looking at pre-existing options and these sorts of things, what is that going to do in terms of controlling costs of insurance if we don't have an alternative?

Probably the best approach, the ideal approach, would be to have not-for-profit insurance companies like they have in many of the countries in Europe, particularly Germany.

King:  So would you prefer the co-op approach then by Senator Conrad or do you think there has to be some kind of a public option, a government option?

Webb:  In an ideal world, we should be looking at not-for-profit insurance companies.  That doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to make a good living but it's only been in the last 20 years that the profit margins have gone so high.

King:  And what happens if Leader Reid comes to you and says, we don't have a perfect world.  I have a public option.  States can opt out.  He needs your vote.

Webb:  I think that is an interesting concept.  As you know, it's fairly recent in terms of the discussions that we've been having on it. One thing that I did say to the leader is that I will vote to proceed forward to debate.  That doesn't mean that I will necessarily at this time commit myself to voting for the result of that debate.

King:  If he needs 60, he has your vote?

Webb:  We need to have the debate.

King:  Let's move on to Afghanistan.  As you know, the president faces a hefty decision here for commander-in-chief.  The general says he needs as many as 40,000 troops, maybe even more than that, to defeat the Taliban.

They're waiting for the election to play out.  As that goes on, the former Vice President Dick Cheney has said you're dithering, the commander-in-chief should take decisive action and send those troops.

Webb:  Well, first, I think if you look at the way the Bush administration moved and maneuvered this country into the war in Iraq, you can see the long-term results of bad decision making.

The process that this administration is using is a very proper and smart process, and too many people have been characterizing this as the military versus the administration or General McChrystal not being listened to.

General McChrystal is one voice.  We have people in this administration who have a tremendous amount of experience.  Jim Jones, the National Security Adviser, is among them.  He has more actual combat time I think than any high-ranking general on active duty today, plus he was commandant of the Marine Corps, plus he commanded NATO forces.

So this deliberate process is what we need because we're going to end up living with the results for a good period of time.  And I don't think, by the way, that they should necessarily be viewed as being tied to the election either.

King:  Let me fall on that point because we had Mr. Abdullah, the challenger in that election and most suspect he will lose this election, his point without making a recommendation to President Obama is, if you think this election and the reelection of President Karzai is going to get you an efficient government, end the corruption, improve the training of the Afghan police and army, his message was essentially think again.  Look at the past record.  That's what you'll get in the future. Do you agree with that?

Webb:  I tend to agree with the comment that this election is not going to in and of itself validate the new government of Afghanistan. There's a couple things we probably need to be looking at in that area.  One is that we have this debate where people compare the situation in Afghanistan to Iraq or to Vietnam.  And it's really neither.

In my view, it's more like Lebanon in the 1980s.  I was there as a journalist in Beirut with a very weak central government, very strong factions around that they were trying to build the Lebanese national army in the absence of an actual strong Lebanese national government.

If you look back to '01 when the Afghani government was formed in Bonn, in the agreements in Bonn, it was a victory for that time because we got an international agreement to proceed forward with this constitution.

But I think it was probably flawed in the sense that this new constitution gave too much power to a central government in a country that is so disparate and removed from the central government concept over its history.

So one of the things Abdullah has said and others is that you probably are going to need devolution of power for the long-term health of the Afghani government.

The question is, is that all going to happen in the time period that we have where we're apparently going to be putting more troops in at some level and trying to build an Afghan army, a large Afghan army in the absence of a viable government? And that's I think the issue that's holding up the decision right now.

King:  One more foreign policy question.  You made a high-profile visit to Myanmar, a country formerly known as Burma, not that long ago and helped secure the release of an American who was being held there. The administration is now sending a delegation and critics would say, why are you meeting with this abusive military regime that holds so many political prisoners?  What is to be gained from this?

Webb:  Well, the purpose of the trip was a piece of a five-nation trip I made through Southeast Asia.  I've got a long experience in Southeast Asia, going back to more than 40 years ago.  And I was the first American leader to meet with General Than Shwe, the head of the military junta.

And my view is we need to move forward with some sort of a dialogue with all of these regimes in order to try to bring about better conditions.  And if you look at the past two months, I think we've seen movement forward without abandoning the aspirations that we all have for eventual democracy in Burma.

King:  I want to close with this, it's on the front page of just about every paper in the neighborhood here in Washington, D.C.  Your governor's race a week from Tuesday.  And it's been great state for Democrats in recent years but your Democratic candidate is down now in some polls by about a dozen points and there's a bit of a disagreement between the gubernatorial campaign and the Democratic White House. This is a quote from the "Washington Post," "Obama, Kaine," meaning the current governor of Virginia, "and others had drawn up a road map to victory in Virginia.  Deeds," the candidate now, "chose a different path."

Is there dysfunction in the Democratic family?

Webb:  I don't think there is.  I think the template for the election this year is by virtue of turnout realities and this sort of thing a lot different than it was last year.  So you can't apply the same model.

Since Virginia is in election season every single year, we tend to focus at the very end of a campaign, particularly in these off-year elections.  So I think when people really take a good, hard look at Creigh Deeds and what his life story is and compare him to the record, philosophically and otherwise of his opponent and the people down- ticket with his opponent, I think they're going to start gravitating back toward him and certainly hope so not only for Creigh Deeds but we have some really fine candidates down-ticket who are running.

King:  If that does not happen and Creigh Deeds loses this election, to what degree is that a referendum on the first year of President Obama and his policies?

Webb:  One of the things I learned by being in the Reagan administration is never answer a what-if question.

King:  And all the frustration about spending...

Webb:  Well, setting the question aside, Virginia is almost a demographic mirror of the country.  It's -- Northern Virginia is high- immigrant, high-tech.  Southwest Virginia is very rural and has had hard times because of the coal industry and the tobacco industry going away.  Southside has lost an enormous amount of manufacturing jobs. More than half the jobs there just this decade.  The Norfolk/Virginia Beach has the highest concentration of military people in the country. And I'm sure people will be looking at the voting patterns at different parts of Virginia to try to figure out what the lessons are from last year and the crises of this year.

King:  That's why we have our wonderful map.  We'll be using it on election night.  Senator Jim Webb of Virginia, thanks for coming in today.