Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., a superdelegate, has not endorsed a candidate for president.

WASHINGTON -- After 16 months in office, Sen. Jim Webb and his signature GI bill have shot to the national stage.

The Virginia Democrat's bill has become an issue in the presidential campaign and the war-funding debate, and Webb has been mentioned as a potential candidate for vice president.

Tomorrow, he releases his ninth book, "A Time to Fight." In excerpts in today's Parade magazine, Webb, who served as a rifle platoon and company commander in Vietnam, talks about the importance of leaders' decisions in combat and on Capitol Hill.

Virginia Rep. James P. Moran, D-8th, says Webb has earned national buzz by working tirelessly for his bill, which would increase educational benefits for veterans.

"This is his legacy already. He is going to become a national figure for service members and military families," Moran said. "Jim would be an extraordinarily good choice as a running mate for Barack Obama."

The Illinois senator has yet to seal the Democratic nomination, and Webb, a Virginia superdelegate, has not endorsed a candidate. In West Virginia on Monday, Obama referred to Webb as his friend and used Webb's bill as campaign fodder.

Gerald Pomper, a political analyst at Rutgers University, said that as the vice presidential pick, Webb -- a Marine veteran and former secretary of the Navy -- could satisfy the Democratic Party's need to appear stronger on national defense and foreign policy.

"He also brings an emotional commitment, some heat to it," Pomper said. "V.P.s are supposed to be the more heated guys."

In an interview promoting his new book, Webb said he's "not really" interested in a vice presidential slot and certainly not fazed by national attention to him and his GI bill.

"I don't even think in those terms," he said. "I came up here to get the things done that I can get done. And I feel pretty confident we're going to get this one done."

Despite the momentum Webb has built for his GI bill -- majorities in the Senate and the House have sponsored it -- critics say the freshman lawmaker has focused too much on military issues.

Retiring Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, R-11th, who has not ruled out a run against Webb in 2012, said Webb has tied his political career to war policy.

"He's a one-trick pony," Davis said in an interview. "The war will probably not be an issue [in 2012]. When that goes away, what is there?"

Webb said he has heard this before.

"I'm not a one-issue candidate; I care about a lot of other things," he said.

Webb speaks up for workers' wages and has sponsored legislation to reduce prison recidivism through social programs, but only one bill is framed in his office lobby -- S. 22, the veterans bill he introduced his first day in the Senate.

One of the first things you see in Webb's office is a picture from Nov. 9, 2006. Webb is smiling and raising his Marine son's combat boots in victory, having just been elected to the Senate. But in his new book, Webb writes of that moment: "I literally felt like I was stepping out of a sewer."

From his disdain for the nastiness of politics through his father's sadness when Webb left to serve in Vietnam, "A Time to Fight" is part memoir and part policy paper.

The book portrays Webb as a Senate outsider. "It's not always fun to be up here," though it's always an honor, he writes, calling the Senate's debates "impotent diatribes that signify little more than its own inability to govern."

But analysts say that outsider mentality and desire to speed up the legislative process have earned Webb respect.

"He's got hillbilly through and through," said Webb adviser David "Mudcat" Saunders. "If the guy told a lie, his tongue would fall out. That's refreshing."

Webb writes personally about his father's disgust for the war in Vietnam.

"When I received my orders, my father retired from active duty, telling me that he 'couldn't bear to watch it' while still wearing the uniform." It was the only time he saw his father -- an Air Force colonel -- cry.

In "A Time to Fight," Webb references a host of policy positions he drafted that fell on deaf ears, only to become Pentagon policy decades later. He notes his arguments to move bases in Asia, reduce troops in Europe, and add Marine representation on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Webb served as an assistant secretary before President Ronald Reagan named him secretary of the Navy in 1987.

He writes that his 1984 memo to increase the Navy's fleet "did not win any votes on the turf-oriented Joint Chiefs of Staff," but the conviction "eventually led me to resign as Secretary of the Navy when a different approach was mandated."

On Iraq, Webb quotes his own words from 2002: "Those who are pushing for unilateral war in Iraq know full well that there is no exit strategy if we invade and stay."

Davis says that for all Webb's past bipartisan work, the senator has "turned into a rank partisan guy."

Webb largely ignores such criticism. And right now no fight matters to him and veterans groups more than his GI bill.

"We are not as concerned with who picks the fight as [with] who can carry it through," said Eric Hillman of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. "He's proven himself as someone who can start it and finish it."
Contact Neil H. Simon at (202) 662-7669 or nsimon@mediageneral.com.