Former Sen. Jim Webb "seriously looking at" a presidential bid

Former Sen. Jim Webb, D-Virginia, is inching closer to the category of Democrats who vying for the slot of "not Hillary Clinton" in the Democratic primary.

Webb, who served as a Democratic senator from Virginia as well as the Secretary of the Navy under former President Ronald Reagan, said Tuesday that he is taking a "hard look" at another political future.

"I'm seriously looking at the possibility of running for president but we want to see if there's a support base from people who would support the programs that we are interested in pursuing with the leadership," Webb said, saying there are "four or five months" of discussions that still need to happen.

As for the question of which party primary he would compete in, Webb had a more straightforward answer.

"I'm a Democrat. I have strong reasons for being a Democrat," he said. "If you want true fairness in the society, if you want to give a voice in the corridors of power to the people who otherwise would not have it I believe that would come from the Democratic Party."

During an hour-long speech and Q&A session at the National Press Club Tuesday, Webb had plenty of criticism to offer on topics ranging from divisions in American society to U.S. foreign policy. He had less to say about the prospects of facing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who, though not an official 2016 candidate, has made all the right moves to be one.

Webb declined to answer a question about Clinton's strengths and weaknesses, saying that she had "a much broader forum than I do to answer that question." And asked about her role in setting U.S. policy abroad in recent years - which he had minutes earlier called a "tangled mess" -- Webb once again said the question should go to Clinton herself.

"I'm not here to undermine her," he said.

But Webb had plenty to say about U.S. foreign policy -- or lack thereof, as he might argue -- that sounded a lot like criticism of the current administration.

"An understandable statement of our national security interests is the basis of any great nation's foreign policy...We do not have that now," He said. "Our foreign policy has become a tangled mess in many cases of what can only be called situational ethics."

He brought up his 2011 opposition to President Obama's use of airstrikes in Libya in 2011 and even suggested that the president overstepped his bounds when he used U.S. airpower to prevent the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) from massacring a group of religious minorities inside Iraq.

"There is no such thing as the right of any president to unilaterally decide to use force in combat operations based on the vague concept of humanitarian intervention," Webb said, arguing that short of treaty obligations or U.S. forces under attack, the president should go to Congress first.

Asked about Mr. Obama's announcement that he ordered airstrikes against militants in Syria, Webb offered only the bare assessment that it seemed legal.

"If he is ordering these strikes based on the notions of international terrorism, to borrow from the remarks that he made, if he is saying this is an international terrorist entity and the national security interests of the United States are directly threatened, and he is conducting limited strikes, I would say that is legal," Webb said. "The question of judgment would remain to be seen."

He also warned of changes at home, where he said that "tens of millions of people are being quietly written off" by wealthier Americans and politicians.

"The very character of America is being called into question," he said. "Who are we as a people? What is it that unites us, rather than divides us? Where is our common ground when the centrifugal forces of social cohesion are spinning so out of control that the people at the very top exist in a distant outer orbit?"