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On the Issues
Edwards displays similar indignation on other big issues. On health care: "Can we finally say we stand, now and forever, for every single man, woman and child in America having health care?" On the wealth gap: "It's not okay for a few people to get rich and everybody else to continue to struggle." On energy: "Our generation must be the one that says yes to renewable fuels, and ends forever our dependence on foreign oil. It is time to ask the American people to be patriotic about something other than war." On global warming: "We can take responsibility for protecting this earth. But if we don't seize the moment, it will be too late."
Are you detecting a theme? "Edwards is running a very different campaign this time," says Democratic strategist Anita Dunn. "He's appealing to the moral conscience of the Democratic Party." In fact, if there's a phrase he's using just about as often as "transformational change," it's "moral authority." That's the currency our government has lost, Edwards contends, both here and abroad. To drive home the point, he announced his candidacy from New Orleans, with a poor and devastated neighborhood as the backdrop.
Ask him about the first 100 days of an Edwards Presidency, and he talks about traveling the world to repair America's image, and "getting America engaged in issues that are important to the world, so that they could see us as a moral leader -- issues like the genocide in Darfur and the spread of HIV/AIDS."
The John Edwards of today -- feistier, almost angry -- took shape during a period in which, he says, he "learned more than during my time in the United States Senate." Shortly after his 2004 defeat, Edwards accepted a position as director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina. He's quick to say that he didn't just sit at a desk analyzing problems, but traveled extensively, "getting things done." In a speech at Dartmouth College, he listed things he helped accomplish: "We got the minimum wage raised in six states, made college available to kids willing to work while in school, organized thousands of workers into unions, did humanitarian work in Africa with the International Rescue Committee."
His campaign manager, former Michigan Rep. David Bonior, says Edwards has spent time "thinking deeply about huge issues." That's a standard line to be sure, but to Edwards's credit, he was among the first Democrats to provide detailed policy prescriptions (see "Edwards on the Issues").
Candor can be risky, though. Take his plan to provide universal health care. Edwards unhesitatingly says it will cost between $90 billion and $120 billion a year. When asked by Tim Russert on Meet the Press if he'd be willing to raise taxes in order to pay for this, he replied, "Yes. We'll have to raise taxes." Hmmm. He'll have to hope times have changed since that open-your-wallet honesty helped doom Walter Mondale in 1984.
He'll also discover if the playbook has changed since Bill Clinton showed Democrats how to win elections as a centrist. After all, Edwards is running to the left of his rivals. "I don't understand why he was being defined as a centrist last election," says Bonior. "On race relations, organizing workers, poverty -- he was the most progressive. The centrist label was not accurate."
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