Jim Webb: ‘I’m Very Concerned About Where We’re Going in This Country’

RADDATZ: I’m going to leave that to you.

I want to move to the Iran deal. You say you have a lot of concerns and we’re going to read it.

What concerns you most?

And if you were still in the Senate, would you vote against it?

WEBB: Well, first, I have been a proponent of these sorts of approaches toward rogue and rogue regimes. I worked with Vietnam in terms of normalizing relations there. I led the change in Burma in terms of opening up that regime.

I just have very serious concerns here. Number one is even if all of these processes worked — and I respect the people who put them together — at the end of 10 years, what are we going to have? Have we now given our endorsement of the fact that Iran will eventually obtain nuclear weapons?

And then secondly, the process beginning now, I think, is — we’ve got to be very careful in terms of how it affects the strategic balance in the region in terms of signals that we send, not just in terms of who’s got how many conventional weapons.

RADDATZ: And I hate to say be quick on this because it’s your entire campaign. But we’ll let you go campaign.

How do you think your prospects look for being president?

And why do you want to be president? You stayed in the Senate on term.

WEBB: Well, I’ve had four different periods of public service in my life. And I’ve been able to move out of public service for a while and look at things differently. So four year — one term in the Senate is a term and a half of a presidency. Wasn’t a short period of time.

I’ve had five years in the Pentagon, one as —

RADDATZ: So why do you want to be president?

WEBB: I’m very concerned about where we’re going in this country. And I think we’re going to see some dramatic changes in terms of how we approach our economic fairness issues and we really need a commander in chief who understands how to deal with these issues.

RADDATZ: Thank you very much for joining us, Senator Webb.