“I don’t think God is through with me,” John Edwards said after
his criminal trial on campaign finance reform ended with a hung
jury. Maybe not, but American politics certainly is. Edwards may
yet return to his lawyer career but Richard Nixon will return to
public office before he does.
The amazing thing is that anyone ever thought he was a political
star in the first place. Edwards has one of the most remarkably
unimpressive political résumés of any person to become a major
political figure in the last few decades. That serious people
thought he was ever prime presidential timber is a greater
indictment of our political system than any of Edwards’s own
transgressions.
And yet many supposedly savvy pundits lavished praise on
Edwards: Here’s Slate.com’s William Saletan in 2003
pondering why Edwards’s presidential foray was going
nowhere:
Why Edwards hasn’t climbed out of the pack is a mystery to me.
Beyond his superficial assets — good looks, youth, Southern
heritage — he’s got an agile mind and a natural ability to relate
to people. He’s put together a sensible set of policies… (maybe)
Edwards will get to carry his banner into the general election. But
if he doesn’t, whoever beats him should pick it up and carry it in
his stead.
Here’s a thought: If the politician is failing despite his many
fine qualities maybe you should reexamine whether he really has
those qualities.
Let’s review the record:
The foundation of Edwards’s reputation is that he was allegedly
a brilliant trial attorney, a kind of living, breathing John
Grisham character taking on the big and powerful for the sake of
the poor and downtrodden.
So the story goes. Edwards did win some pretty big cases against
big corporations. It has never been clear — to me anyway - why
this was more laudable than righting wrongs that do not involve
deep-pocketed defendants. I mean, a person screwed out of their
savings is suffering the same whether it was done by MegaEvil Co.,
or a single con artist. Somehow though the latter cases don’t seem
to attract as many lawyers like Edwards. But I digress…
We are supposed to believe that Edwards was a great orator and
won those cases through the sheer brilliance of his closing
arguments. Well, I don’t buy it. Real life is not like the movies.
Surely the facts in those cases and the relevant law had as much to
do, if not more, with the verdicts. My guess is that Edwards’s real
brilliance was sniffing out those cases and latching onto them (and
their contingency fees) before other lawyers.
If Edwards was such a great orator, then why haven’t any of his
speeches been remembered? The only one we do remember is his “Two
Americas” spiel and the main reason for that is it renders his
hypocrisy so clear. Note to political journalists: Convincing a
captive audience of 12 people who are required to render yes/no
judgments is not the same thing as winning over the masses.
Remember, Edwards won only one political race in his entire
career: his 1998 Senate race in North Carolina. Granted he won
office on his first try, but he was running in what turned out to
be a terrible year for Republicans (having overestimated the
public’s eagerness to impeach Bill Clinton). He ran against Lauch
Faircloth, a crusty caricature of an old-time southern pol who was
essentially Jesse Helms without charisma. Even so, the race was
close, with Edwards edging Faircloth out just 51-47%. In 2004,
rather than face potential defeat, he opted not to run again.
Once in office, Edwards distinguished himself mostly by making
it clear how little interest he had in being a legislator. He had
his sights set on the White House from the start and couldn’t be
bothered with the tedious process of passing noteworthy bills or
associating himself with any particular issue or cause besides
himself.
Nor did he show particularly sharp political skills. His most
noteworthy action as senator was voting for the Iraq War
resolution, on the apparent belief this demonstration of
bipartisanship would boost him. He spent most of the rest of his
political career apologizing for it to any Democratic audience that
would listen.
With less than one term under his belt, Edwards made his first
presidential bid in 2004, only to have Howard Dean steal his
thunder. Edwards got a second chance when eventual nominee John
Kerry picked him to be the vice presidential candidate. The theory
was Edwards would help the Democratic ticket make inroads into
southern red states. On Election Day, he couldn’t even put his home
state in the donkey party’s column.
In his 2008 White House bid, he ran a perpetually distant third
in the Democratic primary. Edwards by this time had reinvented
himself into a tough-talking blue-collar populist. He proceeded to
lose the blue-collar vote to that noted voice of the common man,
Hillary Clinton. This was as Clinton herself was flailing in her
efforts to stop Barack Obama’s momentum.
Working class people took one look at this ambulance-chasing
pretty-boy saw him for the shallow hack he was and paid him no
mind. Edwards’s real constituency was his fellow wealthy
upper-class whites, the types who populate the New York
Times editorial pages and opinion journals like Slate.com and
the New Republic. His “Two Americas” line appealed to their liberal
guilt and sense of noblesse oblige. There just aren’t nearly enough
of them to win an election.
Thank God.
