Is John Edwards the Next Robert Kennedy?

Newsweek MSNBC.com: By Jonathan Darman

Outrage came easier in that optimistic America. On a 1967 trip to the Mississippi Delta, Kennedy found windowless shacks filled with poor black children, starving to death. He was stunned and so was the nation. 'Seeing those children with distended bellies and sores that wouldn't heal on the 'CBS Evening News' that night,' recalls Peter Edelman, one of Kennedy's close aides, 'the country was really shocked.'

There are fewer distended bellies in Edwards's America but there is also less outrage. Today's middle class is driven by its own economic insecurity. Educated professionals worry about health-care costs, mortgage payments and simply getting by. Sensitive to this reality, Edwards says that when he talks of "two Americas," he means not the rich and the poor but the rich and "everyone else." Indeed, many of the cornerstones of Edwards's economic agenda, like universal health care and federal penalties for predatory lenders, have appeal on both sides of the poverty line. But even Edwards admits working Americans have trouble swallowing the notion they have more in common with poor people than they do with the affluent.

Edwards also faces a credibility gap in a country grown cynical since Kennedy's death. ... But to a weary nation worried about the war in Iraq, the threat of terror and the health of the planet, his words sound like more empty promises from a politician.

Edwards is most believable, most like Bobby Kennedy, when he simply listens. At a forum in Wise, Va., on the final day of the poverty tour, he became visibly moved as he took in the tales of poor Virginians and Kentuckians who'd lived most of their lives without health care. "Are you all listening?" he demanded as he turned to his press corps with a searing, and genuine, rage. The reporters did not respond. Neither has the country, yet.

A new ad recalls the suffering of the Edwards family

Slate Magazine:By John Dickerson

What seems new here is that Edwards is making an affirmative act to put his personal life before voters. Yes, he called a press conference and went on 60 Minutes in March when his wife's diagnosis was news, but then it was a major development that required comment. This time, he's not responding to something that's just happened or answering a question from a reporter. He's pointing us to his personal trials in an ad. That the ad and the campaign are coy about what Elizabeth is talking about suggests that they don't want to seem to be profiting from her illness or her son's death...

The indirection is a little irritating—trying to play on our emotions without getting called out—but there is nothing wrong with Edwards making the link between his private pain and his qualifications for office. He has endured his son's death and his wife's illness, and that not only makes him a tough guy but gives him a sense of perspective about the value of life. Those are qualities we want in a president. Not sufficient qualities, but necessary ones. He's not asking for sympathy; he's asking that we make a link to his life experience. It is, in a limited way, a version of the message John McCain sends about his endurance as a POW, though without the obvious element that McCain's suffering was in service to his country.

So, I put up a link to the "I feel pretty" video when it came out. I didn't foresee how much attention that video would continue to command, and how it would divert attention from Edward's platform and ideas for the country, which deserve attention. Thus, I feel a bit guilty about contributing to it.(It's still up; maybe it's time to remove it, as a symbolic gesture.) I haven't switched primary allegiance to Edwards--I still support Obama with enthusiasm--but I respect the positions Edwards has put forward thus far in his campaign, and would like the media to focus more on that than on haircuts. (BTW, did you hear what Mitt Romney paid for makeup?)

Addendum: Elizabeth Edwards submitted a posting to Slate, explaining that the intended reference is to some of the injured clients and their families that trial lawyer Edwards represented over the years and wrote about in his book. (Maybe good summer reading for the Wisconsin legislator trying to defund UW Law School, and the Republican Assembly colleagues who voted with him.) I'm enjoying Elizabeth Edward's feisty engagement in the campaign (as I did Hillary's in 1992), for whatever that's worth; I read that the punditocracy thinks it emasculates her husband. I'm not a good judge of the American public on such matters.

Edwards Can't Get Started

The Opinionator New York Times Blog:

Would Edwards’s campaign be helped by a different debate format? Edwards’s wife, Elizabeth, says her husband wants to thin the roster of candidates during the overcrowded debates. Fewer debaters would equal more debate, Mrs. Edwards suggests. She writes in a post at the Democratic activist site MyDD.com:

John meant what he said in Iowa: he wants smaller groups (or longer debates) so that there can be an end to the notion that a candidate can skate through the debates with sound bite answers. Everyone has sixty seconds to explain their [health] care plan and John’s truly universal plan ends up sounding just like a “plan” to talk about health care. It does a disservice to the voters. Since no one (maybe not even the candidates’ spouses!) would watch a three hour debate, it seems more sensible to have a series of randomly constituted smaller groups.

I'm thinking a debate among the Dem candidates' spouses might be fun, and more informative than what we're seeing now. Elizabeth Edwards and Michelle Obama v. Bill Clinton--that would be a trip.

John Edwards Vows To End All Bad Things By 2011

The Onion :

AMES, IA—In an effort to jump-start a presidential campaign that still has not broken into the top Democratic tier, former Sen. John Edwards made his most ambitious policy announcement yet at a campaign event in Iowa Monday: a promise to eliminate all unpleasant, disagreeable, or otherwise bad things from all aspects of American life by the end of his second year in office.

'Many bad things are not just bad—they're terrible,' said a beaming Edwards, whose 'Only the Good Things' proposal builds upon previous efforts to end poverty, outlaw startlingly loud noises, and offer tax breaks to those who smile frequently. ...

"Imagine a world free of procrastination, class disparity, and itchiness," Edwards said. "It will only be possible if we try." ...

Republican front-runner Rudolph Giuliani attacked Edwards Tuesday for labeling things as bad when they may actually turn out to be good in the long run. ..."On a personal note, I rather like cloudy days, and I don't want to live in a world where they don't exist."

Edwards Lays Out Health Care Plan

From The New York Times:

DETROIT (AP) -- Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on Thursday proposed cutting health care costs by overhauling the patent process for breakthrough drugs and requiring health insurance companies to spend at least 85 percent of their premiums on patient care....

Edwards' plan would offer cash payments in place of long-term patents for companies that develop certain breakthrough drugs and then reap large profits because of the monopolies those patents provide.

He said offering cash incentives instead would allow multiple companies to produce generic and other versions of those drugs to drive down prices. Campaign officials said the payments could be voluntary for drug companies and would be aimed at spurring the development of drugs that cure diseases.

'Dealing with the health care crisis is about more than just about coverage,'' Edwards said. ''Our health care system is entirely too expensive. We put more money into health care than any country in the industrialized world and we get one of the worst products out in the other end.''

He also said his plan would require health insurance companies to spend at least 85 percent of the premiums they collect on patient care, adding that 30 percent of insurance premiums currently go toward administrative expenses and profit. He said New York, Minnesota, New Jersey, Florida already impose similar requirements.

His plan also would require that all Americans sign up for health insurance and would enact various reforms aimed at lowering administrative costs for providers and improving chronic and preventive care for patients. About 47 million people currently lack health insurance in the United States.

Explaining the inexplicable

What kind of haircut did John Edwards get for $400? - By Christopher Beam - Slate Magazine
How does a bright guy let these things happen?
Cut the hair, John. Off.
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I don't want to devote multiple postings to John Edwards' hair. Maybe to his ideas, not to his hair. But a couple of links are de riguer at this point:


Maureen Dowd: Running With Scissors - From The New York Times

Here it is: John Edwards, feeling pretty. Oy!

And while we're at it