Meet John Edwards: Barbie’s Ken Doll Candidate
By Jackson Murphy (08/04/03)
At one point Sen. John Edwards was the Democratic frontrunner. At one point Edwards was the being touted as the next Bill Clinton too. A Charming, good looking Southerner, who wasn’t from the left wing of the party. What a difference a couple of months make.
When Edwards appeared on Tim Russert’s “Meet the Press” in May of 2002, the Democratic love-in with the Junior Senator became a sad passing crush. Robert Novak describes the meeting that some have suggested was worse than Ted Kennedy’s similar meltdown in 1979:
"Edwards suggested Afghanistan was returning to Taliban control, but opposed a U.S. troop buildup there. He would not criticize Israeli settlements or military incursions in the Palestinian territories, and could not explain how the United States as an uncritical supporter of Israel could help achieve Middle East peace. He assailed President Bush for dipping into the Social Security trust fund but would not specify spending cuts or tax increases to avert it. He opposed the Bush tax cuts but would not embrace Sen. Kennedy's rollback. The same Democrats who had been enchanted by Edwards were appalled."
He spoke with a vagueness and unfamiliarity of the issues that has prevented Edwards from trying to suggest new and useful policy. If he had spoken with authority on the issues, like a Bill Clinton, he might now be able to be the real alternative to Dean and Kerry.
The one thing that Edwards has going for himself now is that he is no longer the frontrunner. Slate’s William Saletan tells it this way, “Unless we learn something awful about Howard Dean in the next several months, the Democratic race for president will probably come down to him and one other, more openly centrist candidate. If money, experience, and military service govern the decision, that candidate could be John Kerry. But there's one other candidate I can see filling the centrist slot, surviving the Dean insurgency, and giving President Bush a tougher fight. That candidate is John Edwards.”
That said, there is plenty to worry about for Edwards, and plenty for Bush and Karl Rove to hope for if Edwards pulls the rabbit out of his hat. In no particular order and they have
been listed before: he has no military record, he hasn’t finished his only term in office as Senator, he used to be a trial lawyer, so he is ambulance chaser rich, and unless he is hanging out with Zoolander, being “really, really, good looking” isn’t really enough to win the presidency.
But the rookie can raise money-lots of it. Nearly $12 million in the first half of 2003 alone, putting him second in the field. And in another extremely positive note, Edwards does seem to understand a fundamental notion of America. In his standard stump speeches he explains:
“Do we believe in an America where the family you're born into controls your destiny? Our ancestors left a place of princes and paupers and masters and servants. This is not our America. What we believe [is that] wherever you live and whoever your family is, and whatever the color of your skin is, if you're willing to work hard, if you're willing to take responsibility, you ought to be able to go as far as your God-given talents and hard work will take you.”
But wait there’s more. On the one hand he has taken to denouncing fellow candidate Gephardt’s Heath Care plan as being the big-spending giveaway that it is, has supported fast track trade negotiating authority for the president, and has been fairly progressive on free trade, voting to normalize trade with China.
On the other he voted against the 2001 tax cuts, and would plan to drop the 2001 tax cuts for the upper income brackets to help pay for social security, and his heath care plan is really no better.
So at this point many people have already written Edwards off, and perhaps he doesn’t have a chance. But as E.J. Dionne points out in The Washington Post Edwards might have a chance if things get increasingly better in Iraq and policy discussions return to matters of domestic policy.
“[T]he incessant focus on Iraq has created a climate especially beneficial to Dean and Kerry -- and inhospitable to Sen. Joe Lieberman, the party's strongest supporter of the war,” writes Dionne. And Edwards is in the same boat.
Edwards got off on the wrong track trying to preach an intense policy heavy speech strategy trying to prove that he had ideas and policies people would like. But, writes Dionne, the “9/11 attacks [harmed Edwards] than did any other candidate's because the attacks put a premium on experience and threw light on the North Carolinian's relatively brief political career.”
Instead he should have focused on his attributes. Charm, looks, and some rather mainstream domestic views. And if he doesn’t succeed this time around he will be a force in Democratic politics for years to come. Throw him in a governorship for a term or two and bring him back in 10 and he’s could be their guy.
Ryan Lizza, in The New Republic, has uncovered Edwards rather strange campaign strategy. “Edwards spent the first half of the year largely focused on raising money, and he now barely tops Carol Moseley Braun in most polls. But, for months, his advisers have cautioned that it is all part of the plan.”
Whatever that “plan” is, it isn’t working. But that shouldn’t discount Edwards from becoming a new Clinton someday soon, and when voters tire of Howard Dean, or John Kerry, Edwards could solidify himself with a late inning surge.
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