Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade was once a staple of male youth. The poem is both an anthem to the glory of military sacrifice and an ode to the brutality of battle. It is a memorial to a moment in the Battle of Balaclava, when frightened men rode screaming horses into the mouth of hell and did not return. The poem’s popularity rose and fell with the British Empire itself. What once inspired courage now, for many, reeks of jingoism.

As I watched Jim Webb (D-VA) on the debate stage last night, Tennyson’s verse crowded my mind. Webb, a declared candidate for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, is likely familiar with the poem. Born in a family of soldiers, Webb fought in Vietnam, rose to Secretary of the Navy, and represented Virginia in the United States Senate. He has gained additional notoriety as an author of fiction and non-fiction alike.

Throughout the evening, Webb appealed to a party that vanished in the jungles that claimed a measure of his own blood. He argued for strong defense, and a stiff approach to China, Russia, and cyber-security. Webb claimed, uniquely among the candidates, that both #BlackLives and all lives matter. He was measured on Affirmative Action, claiming it should both serve African-Americans but not discriminate against Appalachia’s generations of poor.

Near the end of the debate, CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked the candidates about the enemies they were happy to have. The answers were typical and designed to appeal to the progressive left. Lincoln Chaffee said, “the coal lobby,” while Martin O’Malley replied, “the N.R.A.” Hillary Clinton took the safest approach with a laundry list of groups her fellow partisans love to loathe–the N.R.A., health insurance companies, the Iranians, and Republicans. Bernie Sanders, true to his socialist leanings, lumped Wall St. and pharmaceutical companies into his answer. Jim Webb, with all of the candidates fittingly standing to his left, said, “I’d have to say the enemy soldier that threw the grenade that wounded me, but he’s not around right now to talk to.” When asked to name an enemy, he named an enemy as opposed to rival political factions.

Their’s not to reason why,
Their’s but to do and die:

Equating politics and battle is disrespectful to those who fight in actual wars. Since Jim Webb has fought in both arenas, he would surely think the comparison between a debate and a military engagement a bit pale. Webb dodged no bullets and took no lives last night, but he rode his horse toward political oblivion in a glorious frontal assault that carried no hope of victory.

The Light Brigade took the field under orders that Webb would have surely obeyed. But why did Webb present himself to a party that has moved past him and a nation that cannot label him? Duty is the metaphorical thread that likely joins the Brigade to Webb. He knows the odds are not only stacked, but deadly so. He knows that success is out of reach. But success is not the measure of such a man. Duty drives the action and the gods of battle accept the sacrifice.

The Democratic Party will not sing songs to Jim Webb, nor will he be immortalized in verse. Republicans would also spit him out as lukewarm. Rational politics would embrace and build around him. Partisan politics, driven by narrow ideologies, marks the center of the aisle as the militarized zone. Such is our loss, for Jim Webb is honorable and courageous and too few of our presidential candidates carry those qualities.