John Edwards Stays the Course
Democrat John Edwards has officially declared his candidacy for the Presidency. The announcement came from New Orleans where Edwards was shown helping folks rebuild their homes after Katrina. The video I saw on CNN (go to the “Edwards explains why he’s running for president again” link on the page) was standard democratic “man of the people” fare and was obviously meant as a pointed jab at Republicans in general and the Bush administration specifically for their handling of flooding and resulting humanitarian crisis after the storm. It also was a perfect backdrop for Edwards’ continuing populist theme of the “Two Americas” (roughly rich and poor) that he has focused on in the past and will clearly continue to hit in this campaign.
OK. It’s relevant here to say that I am a Democrat. I have no great love for the Democratic Party, but their biases tend to more often line up with mine, and in my state only members of a given party can vote in that party’s primaries, and that’s important to me. I liked Edwards when he ran for VP. So far, however, his current announcement looked profoundly formulaic. It really was “insert name of candidate here”.
Then things got potentially interesting. The CNN interviewer pointed out that Edwards himself is clearly among the RICH in the Two Americas. He brought up the fact that Edwards is currently building a 3-million dollar home and provided pictures of the construction (these did not show up on the video I saw). The interviewer then asked Edwards how he could possibly hope to represent the poor in America when Edwards himself is clearly wealthy.
I watched the video and hoped for a real answer to this question. Instead, I got more standard political maneuvering. Edwards joked and said he was glad the interviewer liked the house and then went on to say that he was not born wealthy and that he was greatly blessed in his life. He then went right back on message and ignored the question. Sound familiar? How is this different from “Stay the course”?
I think this a relevant question for ANY candidate, but especially for a candidate who seems to be focusing on poverty as a core issue. I think using pictures of the guy’s house is a bit over the top, but welcome to the campaign trail. Here’s the part that bugs me. Answering this question honestly and potentially even powerfully does not seem that difficult. I would have liked to see something like the following.
A bit more hard-core:
“Yes, I’m wealthy. You can’t run for major public office in the U.S. unless you’re wealthy. Every candidate running from both parties will be wealthy. I won’t insult people who are struggling to make ends meet by claiming a kinship with them I don’t possess. But you’re implying that I need to be poor to understand that poverty is a serious problem in America. That’s like saying you need to be in a car wreck to understand that decent brakes are a good idea. It just doesn’t work that way. Poverty in America is dragging us all down. The fallout from Katrina isn’t just a problem for poor folks in New Orleans. It’s a problem for all of us. I’m a wealthy guy from North Carolina and I can see that.”
Or more political:
“Glad you like the house. I like it too. I’ve worked hard to get to the point in my life where I could build that house, and I’m personally proud of that. But I’ve also been profoundly lucky as well. There’s not a whole lot in America that can’t be done with the right combination of work and luck. The people here in New Orleans and all over the country haven’t had a great deal of luck for a long time now. What I want to do is make it just a bit easier for more hard-working Americans to get just a bit luckier. ”
My point here is not that my answers are profoundly better than the one Edwards gave. I actually don’t like the second one very much, but it does, at least, answer the question asked. Edwards is wealthy and is running on a populist message, and so he needs to answer this question. Period. The sort of dodge-and-get-back-on-message trick he used here simply should not work in a presidential campaign, and I hope it doesn’t. Edwards may well have great answers and ideas, but unless he is willing to be more than just a standard politician, I would ask him to stay home and work on his house. We need better.
Be Brave. Be Human.
-Grant
January 3rd, 2007 19:46
Grant,
Neither of your two proposed responses fits nicely into a sound bite, which delights me and likely annoys others.
Political responses are much like the bland responses you receive from a head coach in football during an interview; the response is pat and not insightful.
If you offer insight, you risk being asked more questions. If you are questioned more, you have a greater risk of saying something you do not want to say. The risk of saying the wrong thing and losing voters is great; the safe route is to remain on course and be ridiculed for not saying anything.
Does knowing the price of a gallon of milk in New Hampshire really mean anything? Not really, but can be a major pitfall in the NH primaries if you don’t know the answer. Why? Because you would seem out of touch. I would rather provide answers that politely call out the frivolity of the question, than play along for the sake of not being skewered by the media.
I’d love to see a no sound bite, no party line campaign from anyone, regardless of party affiliation. Then, let the debates begin.
January 3rd, 2007 23:22
Hi Rick,
Thanks. I actually think the second one IS pretty much of a sound bite but at least it addresses the question asked. I’m not sure how we can ever get to content driven debate on a national or even state level. Blogs like this may be one way. What I want to know is exactly what Edwards thinks he can actually DO about poverty, healthcare, education and all those issues I care about. I’m not writing him off, but I’m disappointed. I know he can’t really SOLVE any of these problems, but what is he going to do to at least help?
-Grant
March 12th, 2007 18:54
Hello Grant and Rick,
Your posts make excellent points. I would add a couple items to this stew of musings.
There is an implicit acceptance that Mr Edwards has a problem running on a populist theme while he is at the same time a very wealthy self-made individual.
In your post, Grant, you attribute this wealth to luck. I cannot disagree more. Mr Edwards has to have worked extremely hard, and applied his talents very shrewdly to reach his present state. Bear in mind, that while I can admire and congratulate such an individual, I am no fan of the plaintiff bar, of which he is an esteemed member. I merely point out luck had no place in his results. Raw talent, self-honesty, hard work, determination, responsibility for self, were the components of his success.
Mr Edwards has nothing to apologize for. The strength of this country flows directly from the opportunity for all men, women and children to go as far as their talents, efforts, and ambition will take them.
The real problem, the elephant in the room which is not being acknowledged, is that his brand of populism is envy. His solutions are not to raise up the lower by helping them to help themselves. His solutions are to say it is predjudice, bias, bad luck by which one person has less than another. If this is so, then it is mandated that those with more, having gotten their gains immorally if not illicitly, shoulld have to give of their bounty to the less fortunate. This theme will always have an audience among those who give responsibility for their lives to others. And politicians who pander to those beliefs can ride them into office.
One example you bring up is the impact of Hurricane Katrina. This disaster has been characterized as a natural disater, a governmental failure, a racial and social “holocaust”, etc. The common theme is that it was out of our hands, beyond our ability to cope with it. Either it was a natrual disaster/act of God, or it was a racist response to human beings in distress, or it was a massive governmental failure to help and protect the citizens.
In fact, it was none of these things. It was a moral and political failure of the citizens of Louisiana in general, and the citizens of New Orleans in particular. Louisiana has been known as the bananna republic of the American states for many, many decades. The graft and corruption is a way of life. In this instance, this culture allowed massive amounts of federal funds allocated for flood prevention to be spent on other civic projects and events. Leaving aside the propriety and value of these uses of the funds, of which there is grave doubt, the levees were not kept up to former standards. This resulted in a storm of planned magnitude to breach the levees. In and of itself this is an indictment of the political and citizen class there. In addition, the city never has been and is still not planned to be protected from a level 4 or a level 5 storm. Such storms are projected to occur as a probability in any given year, and with each year that passes, the probability increases incrementally.
Al of this is commonly known and accepted in aggregate. If a citizenry is willing to be led to actions that are directly against their long term interests, over decades and numerous political leaders, no one can honestly say that it was unforeseen.
This is the result of looking to place responsibility for your fate on others. The only alternative left when it goes off the tracks is to cast about for a scapegoat to blame, since it is impossible to accept one did it to oneself. In such an environment, the pilotics of envy seem virtuallu self evident.
Other aspects of the event only serve to further illustrate the personal and political irresponsibility. The Mayor never evacuated the city properly, as outlined in the disaster preparedness document. He blamed the state and the federal leaders for not taking care of his citizens.
Able bodied individuals waited for others to come and rescue them rather than take action individually or in concert with others in the same predicament.
The forces of order, the police, supposed bastions of those who help and serve, went missing, in some cases were seen to be among the lawbreakers and looters inducing chaos and disorder.
In his personal life, Mr Edwards did not advocate that those with more give some of theirs to him. That is always a losing proposition. He went out and earned it himself, taking full responsibility for himself and his family. By this path, he has arguably achieved the American Dream.
I have to ask why he does not wish the same type of success for those who really need some personal success ?
March 13th, 2007 00:43
Hi Denis,
Good to hear from you. If you get a chance, I’d be very interested in your thoughts concerning my response to your comments on my “40 hours and a resolution” post.
First, I don’t think I attributed Edwards’ success only to luck, but to hard work AND luck. He is (as you said), in many ways an example of the American dream come true and (as I said) he SHOULD be proud of that. But I’m not going to discount luck in this process. You need luck. It’s real. Both good and bad. A chance care accident, illness or other injury, a bad or stupid choice that could have ended terribly, but simply by luck did not. Being in the right place at the right time AND having the brilliant idea and the guts to carry it off. The luck not to be born in Iraq in 2006. Luck counts. You can try and dissuade me here, but I think the evidence is on my side.
OK. NOW you can slap me silly for the standard liberal pontificating I’m about to unleash, but, you asked for it :). Denis, I want the country where hard work IS what counts. Not who your parents were (or who their parents were) or what town you grew up in or who you went to school with. I simply believe that that this is the best choice for the long-term stability and health of any society. I wish I lived in that society. I don’t. I want the society where if a kid wants to go to school and learn, there is a good school close by for her to go to. I want her never to have to worry about basic health care or enough to eat, or a place to live. When we have that society then luck will play at least a smaller role in individual success.
Please don’t misunderstand. I LIKE inequality. As long as it is the product of individual differences in work, talent and guts, it’s a GOOD thing. It’s the way things SHOULD work. I want the best to rise to the top. That’s just a lot more likely when the great majority of people start climbing from generally similar places.