As difficult as it is to resist the urge to devote this column to the stupidity and bigotry of Rush Limbaugh, I want to write about John Edwards this week. Despite his continually mediocre showing in national polls, Edwards is emerging as a formidable contender and perhaps the Democratic candidate best suited to defeat President Bush.
While it may have seemed easy at first to write Edwards off as a superficial candidate, capitalizing solely on looks, charisma and hailing from the South, he has gradually put together what Ryan Lizza of The New Republic has called "perhaps the most detailed and coherent domestic agenda of any of the Democratic candidates," highlighted by proposals to provide all Americans with access to health care and higher education.
In addition to specific proposals, Edwards has also hit on a powerful theme to unify his agenda: he will fight for the interests of working people against a president who only respects wealth, as evidenced by a tax cut heavily skewed towards stockholders, heirs and heiresses. The senator's humble upbringing gives him credibility as a champion of the working class; as he is fond of saying in campaign speeches, he is out to show that "the son of a mill worker can beat the son of a president." While much of his rhetoric is highly critical of the president, it is, unlike that of some of his competitors, put in terms of offering a positive alternative rather than simply pointing out the president's failures.
Putting policy aside for a moment while also looking beyond superficial qualities, one finds Senator Edwards in a unique position in regard to electability. This unique position derives not from his strengths or an ability to appeal to voters generally, but rather from his weaknesses and how they play in a match-up with President Bush.
The most common knocks on Edwards revolve around experience. Next year, the final year of his Senate term, will be only his sixth year in government. He did not serve in the military and does not have a great deal of experience dealing with foreign affairs. He has appeared at times not to possess the greatest grasp of policy questions and cannot speak extemporaneously in great detail on any issue as Bill Clinton or Al Gore could.
Sound familiar? These are the same criticisms leveled four years ago (and quite justifiably so) against then-Governor George W. Bush. It would be impossible for the Bush campaign to argue that these qualities disqualify Edwards from being a good president while at the same time trying to argue that Bush is a good president. Taking away the ability to make character the primary issue in the campaign takes away a tremendously important weapon from the Bush reelection effort.
Had Karl Rove and company (aided greatly by the "liberal" media) not been able to portray Al Gore as a stiff, haughty know-it-all with a tendency to exaggerate and say anything to get elected and had been forced to engage the vice-president solely on questions of policy, the election never would have fallen into the hands of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, and George Bush would at present be battling John McCain and a host of other Republicans for a second chance.
With the situation in Iraq becoming increasingly unclear and Bush's massive tax cuts doing nothing to stimulate job growth, the prospect of the 2004 election being decided purely along policy lines rather than portraying one's opponent as, say, an aloof Massachusetts aristocrat or an angry, overly pessimistic hothead must scare the hell out of Rove and the RNC.
Besides experience, the only other option available to the Bush campaign to attack Edwards on character grounds is bringing up his career as a trial lawyer. While it is true that Americans do not hold lawyers in the highest regard, attacking Edwards based on his career as a lawyer could backfire against the Bush campaign. Because most of the work Edwards did as an attorney involved representing working-class Americans against corporate interests such as former Enron CEO and close Bush friend Ken Lay, making his career an issue fits perfectly with his general campaign theme that he is fighting for the vast majority of Americans while Bush is fighting only for a privileged few.
It would also bring into play the president's own pre-political career, including allegations of insider trading (the SEC determined Bush probably broke the law during his sale of Harken Energy stock in 1990, but they decided against prosecuting their boss's son). It is also worth noting that Bush himself wanted to be a lawyer, but, unfortunately, the University of Texas law school operates under the quaint notion that admission should be based on one's ability rather than on one's family connections.
While it is not always the best idea to choose a candidate based on how one expects the opposition to react, the Democrats cannot naively ignore how brutal the 2004 campaign is likely to become. President Bush and his minions are amassing an unprecedented war chest and have consistently demonstrated a capacity to fight dirty, from the vicious smear campaign perpetrated against John McCain in South Carolina during the 2000 campaign to the recent leak of the name of a CIA operative married to administration critic Joseph Wilson. Sen. Edwards presents the best option for the Democratic Party because he has shown the vision in both theme and policy proposals to outshine Bush on the issues while providing the least grounds for the Republicans to cloud the campaign with issues of character.
Anthony Resnick is Trinity junior. His column appears every third Thursday.
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