The No. 2 man with the No. 1 appeal
October 7, 2004
If John Edwards were the presidential nominee, and not John Kerry, the Democratic ticket would be five points ahead right now.
It's not that Edwards is such a superb debater; the polls show a draw with Dick Cheney on Tuesday night. But if he had won his party's nomination earlier this year, he would have been debating George W. Bush, not Cheney. And though Kerry did well enough in his own debate with Bush last week, Kerry's problem is that he is still Kerry, haunted by his own past, stunted by his own personality.
By contrast, Edwards seems young and fresh. Some say he's a show horse, not a workhorse, but the same charge was made against John F. Kennedy in 1960.
As with JFK 44 years ago, there's an opening for a fresher message. According to the latest Fox News/Opinion Dynamics survey, just 31 percent of Americans think that the economy is "excellent" or "good," while 68 percent think it's "fair" or "poor." So Edwards could be saying, as Kennedy did, "Let's get the country moving again."
Some might protest that the country is already moving. Cheney made a weak case for the economy on Tuesday night. After all, aside from energy issues, what the vice president really cares about is foreign policy. Cheney might have noted, for example, that adjusted-for-inflation after-tax income is up more than 10 percent in the last four years.
And of course, it's easy to peg Kerry as a man who would raise taxes. The term "Taxachusetts" has already been coined to include the home state of Kerry-Kennedy liberalism.
Cheney did better in attacking Edwards as a trial lawyer. He recalled, as one illustration, a Minnesota aircraft manufacturer who said he could hire an additional 200 workers for his factory if it weren't for his tort-liability premiums. But Edwards had his answer: "I'm proud of the work I did on behalf of kids and families against big insurance companies, big drug companies, and big HMOs."
In fact, polls suggest that Americans tend to agree with Edwards' anti-big spiel. A CBS/New York Times survey from July found that 64 percent of Americans think that the government serves "a few big interests," compared to just 28 percent who think the government serves "all the people." It's far from clear, to be sure, that an Edwardsian trial-lawyer-ocracy would serve "all the people," but for now, it's apparent that the American people are receptive to the North Carolina's purported populism.
Which helps explain the weakness of the Bush-Cheney ticket. Having used up most of their rhetorical firepower on the Iraq war, the White Housers find themselves vulnerable on issues that an incumbent, presiding over a rising gross domestic product, should own. According to that same Fox poll, by a margin of 49-45, Americans disapprove of the President's handling of the economy.
Moreover, in spite of all the pro-Iraq war speechifying, Bush is losing that issue, too, 50-45.
Yet one thing seems to be saving Bush: the man he is running against. According to the Fox poll, the incumbent is edging the challenger, 47-45.
For an explanation of this disconnect between issues-polling and candidate-polling, look up "Kerry" in the dictionary, starting with his 1971 testimony trashing fellow Vietnam vets. By contrast, Edwards' entry has only a few lines. As with Kennedy in '60, Edwards' sparse record gives him room to maneuver to the left of Republicans - and to the right.
Indeed, amidst his economic populism on Tuesday night, Edwards said, "It's important for America to confront the situation in Iran, because Iran is an enormous threat to Israel and to the Israeli people." Talk such as that suggests that a President Edwards would be nicely in tune with the neoconservatives who now dominate the Bush administration's Middle East policy. Such saber-rattling reassures many hawks.
But of course, Edwards isn't running for president this year. And he won't be, not until 2008 at the earliest.
