In Honesty, John Edwards Meets Unexpected DeLay
By Isaiah Z. Sterrett (04/21/05)
WITH JOHN EDWARDS giving interviews again, one is almost brought to nostalgic tears over memories of the 2004 election. Sure it was bloodcurdling—but in the best ways possible. It was a story of great literary dimension, complete with villains, both of the French and trial-lawyer variety, and heroes, mainly in the form of valiant incumbents and brave war vets. A good time was had by all.
Things were especially lovely after Sen. Edwards, that rich nobody from North Carolina, came on board. (Edwards update: various members of his family may have been employed as, or at least hoped to be employed as, mill workers.) Kerry’s vice presidential candidate was a personal-injuries attorney—which of course is exactly the profession most parents dream of their children attaining. Liberals liked Edwards primarily because he was young and successful. It turns out they were wrong on both counts, but you can’t blame them for trying.
For the apparent sake of humor, Mr. Edwards is back in the news. I don’t know why. Maybe someday, after I spend one lackluster term representing North Carolina in the Senate and then lose the vice presidency to an overweight man from Wyoming, I’ll get press, too.
Asked in an interview with the Harvard Crimson how life under Kerry-Edwards would have been different than life is under Bush-Cheney, Edwards said that things “would be very different.” For starters, he incanted, the Kerry administration “would have launched a serious international effort to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.” Sadly, the interviewer did not follow up the way I would have. “What foreign leader,” the reporter should have asked snidely, “would listen to you about nukes, you smarmy putz?”
Mr. Edwards then squawked about health care, which he has, incidentally—and lots of it. Edwards loves HillaryCare in theory, but one wonders how he’d like it in actual practice. I bet he’d find it to be much like honesty: fine for show, but generally without purpose.
Edwards also thinks Congress should have stayed out of the Terri Schiavo case. He’s still for governmental intrusion into the amount of money working Americans get to keep, but he’s certain that government had no place in such inconsequential silliness as life and death. At this point in the interview, Edwards feigned tears, shifted uncomfortably in his chair, and wondered aloud if he might find work representing the Schindler family in court.
Can’t you almost taste Election Night?
It was all such fun. But know we’ve got what we asked for: Republicans galore. So far, results have been mixed. Luckily, the downward trend of Democrats continues.
This Tom DeLay brouhaha, for instance, is a product not so much of Mr. DeLay, but of his anxious opponents in Congress and the media. DeLay hasn’t really done anything wrong—according to “Time” magazine, no less—but everyone’s decided to pile on anyway.
In a rambling column smugly entitled “Get Tom DeLay to Church on Time,” the New York Times’ Frank Rich compares the anti-scandal of the House Majority Leader to the multiple felonies and impeachment of Bill Clinton. On the bright side, if it turns out DeLay has done something illegal, Rich will be able to announce that, even though law-breaking is wrong, it doesn’t really count as a genuinely “impeachable offense.”
Disconcertingly, Rich devotes an entire paragraph to discussing the religious faith of one of DeLay’s “closest and dearest friends,” Jack Abramoff. “Mr. Abramoff,” snickers Rich, “who is now being investigated by nearly as many federal agencies as there are nights of Passover, is an Orthodox Jew who in his salad days wore a yarmulke to press interviews. In Washington, he opened not one but two kosher restaurants (I hear the deli was passable by D.C. standards) and started a yeshiva.”
That’s a clever literary trick they teach budding columnists at the New York Times: begin a piece with a muddled point, then stray from the point in order to denigrate religious people, and then giggle your way through the remainder of the article.
Republicans may be having a tough week, what with having to explain this DeLay “controversy,” but we can sleep well anyhow, secure in the knowledge that Democrats are doing worse. I’m just hoping that soon John Edwards will talk some more. That seems to work really well.
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