Over at the Weekly Standard, Mary Katharine Ham profiles Col. Tom Manion, USMC (Ret.), a Gold Star father whose son, Travis, was killed in Fallujah. It’s an excellent piece, and well worth reading. It caught my eye because the Manions hail from my hometown, Bucks County, Pa., which sits about 25 miles north of Philadelphia. In 2008, Colonel Manion ran for Congress in the area. As Ham puts it, Manion outperformed expectations “in a tough Pennsylvania district” in a “bad year for Republicans” before “ultimately losing to antiwar Iraq veteran Patrick Murphy,” the sitting congressman.

Though I’ve never met the Manions, I watched that race closely from afar. It was a fascinating campaign: Murphy, a thirtysomething elected in 2006 on an antiwar, anti-Bush platform, versus Manion, a quiet father who believed in the mission. Since it was The Year of Obama, it didn’t get much attention outside of Bucks, but inside the district, the battle was bruising. As a vocal supporter of the surge, Manion was proud to run on the same ballot as John McCain. He rejected the idea of a timetable for withdrawal. Murphy, on the other hand, was one of Obama’s closet antiwar allies on the Hill, going so far as to cosponsor bring-the-troops-home legislation with the Illinois senator. Ham’s right: Manion ran a respectable campaign, and did much to highlight the meaning of his son’s sacrifice beyond the battlefield — about how it was related to what goes on in Washington, and who we send there:

Though Manion is not running against Murphy this year, Mike Fitzpatrick, a former GOP representative, is, and has a real shot to beat the Democrat. To learn more about the Iraq vets running for the House this cycle, check out Vets for Freedom. You can find Ham’s piece here.