George Allen’s desperate attempt to smear Jim Webb is likely to backfire with Virginia voters. Digging deep for dirt, George Allen has entered the realm of fiction. In Jim Webb’s novels, Macaca Allen thought he had hit pay dirt.

Last week the Allen campaign was finally able to get someone to publish the dirt they were peddling. The Drudge Report published passages from Webb’s novels in a last-ditch effort to sway Virginia voters. One of the books the Allen campaign believes is vulgar is Jim Webb’s novel "A Sense of Honor".

However, the novel George Allen finds vulgar, President Ronald Reagan found to be so significant that he quoted it at length at the United States Naval Academy Commencement Exercises in 1985:

One man who sat where you do now and graduated from the Naval Academy in 1968 is another member of our administration — Assistant Secretary of Defense James Webb, the most decorated member of his class. James’ gallantry as a marine officer in Vietnam won him the Navy Cross and other decorations, including two Purple Hearts. James wrote several books about American service men and women. In his book, “A Sense of Honor,'’ he describes the life that you have chosen. He wrote:

“Servicemen are always in motion, in the air at more than the speed of sound, underwater at depths whales could only dream of, on the surface of the water cruising at 30 miles an hour through crashing seas with another ship almost touching theirs . . . replenishing their oil supplies. Or they are on the ground, in the dirt, testing and training weapons that may someday kill others but today may deal them that same irony. The smallest margin of error separates a live man from a dead man. And in war, of course, they are the first and usually the only ones to pay. The President and the Congress may suffer bad news stories. The military man suffers the deaths of his friends, early and often.'’

So, is George Allen saying that President Ronald Reagan read smut? Surely, Senator George "Macaca" Allen would like to retract his accusations so that he doesn’t risk offending his base voters who admire the Great Communicator.