Demonstration of what the Dem Kerry lemmings have overlooked:
Posted 2/25/2004 10:36 PM Updated 2/26/2004 12:38 AM
Edwards: Keeps it simple, energetic and to-the-point
By Martin Kasindorf, USA TODAY
ATLANTA — A local dignitary shouts, "The next president of the United States — John Edwards!" The candidate bounds into the ballroom from a side door. John Mellencamp's rousing Your Life Is Now blasts on the sound system.
Democratic candidate John Edwards hugs his wife at a campaign rally in Milwaukee.
By Charlie Riedel, AP
Bestowing megawatt smiles and reaching for outstretched hands, the senator from North Carolina builds excitement with every step toward the stage. Up where the crowd can see him, he smiles even wider, stretches his arms dramatically sideways and gives a double thumbs-up. The trademark gesture is jaunty and upbeat. (Related photos: The styles of John Edwards)
Democratic strategist James Carville calls Edwards the party's best stump performer in memory — even better than Bill Clinton. It's easy to see why. It's in the arms.
Edwards uses every joint. The thumbs. The clenching fists. The pointing index fingers. When he says he wants to restore America's reputation overseas as a "beacon to the world," he is the Statue of Liberty, left arm raised. Criticizing the Medicare prescription-drug benefit enacted by the Republican-controlled Congress, he calls it "reform" while he forms little quotation marks with bent fingers to show he's mocking the law.
Edwards spent 20 years as a personal-injury lawyer polishing all that charm and kinetic energy. He became so adept in court that he won millions of dollars in jury verdicts for clients — and hefty fees for himself. The experience shows in his standard speech about his "politics of hope" three times a day.
Follow John Kerry and John Edwards every day as they campaign for Super Tuesday support.
Edwards, who is 50 but looks years younger, tries to keep a crowd with him as if he's addressing 12 men and women in the jury box. His brown hair is better coiffed than the average guy's, but his dark suits are off the rack, not too fancy. He keeps his language simple, free of jargon. Instead of a Senate lapel pin, he wears an Outward Bound pin that had belonged to his son Wade, who died in a car crash in 1996 at the age of 16.
Often Edwards pauses to say, "You know what I'm saying," or, "Every one of you can relate to what I'm saying." It's a way of getting listeners on his side.
Edwards, John Kerry's long-shot opponent, is disciplined. Not caring that reporters who travel with him roll their eyes at the unchanging words, he almost never departs from tried-and-true lines that are new to watchers of local TV news — and that work with Democrats.
His delivery is rapid-fire. Edwards recites an inspiring history of overcoming obstacles. But he seldom speaks in any detail of his own family, especially Wade.
He reminds voters in his Southern accent that he is a millworker's son who went to law school and regularly beat "armies" of "very dignified" corporation lawyers. He says he won election to the Senate in 1998 by defeating Republican Sen. Jesse Helms' North Carolina "machine." At the mention of Helms, partisan crowds predictably boo and hiss. Edwards always says, "Good response."
Clayton Taylor, 29, of Dalton, Ga., a recent business-school graduate looking for a job, prefers Edwards to Kerry. "I think he's got the potential to connect better with the average American," Taylor says.
Televised debates show Edwards' flexible side. A trial lawyer learns to be fast on his feet, and in debates Edwards departs from his canned responses to seize an opening. In Milwaukee on Feb. 15, he grabbed a chance to poke fun at Kerry's reputation for windiness.
A panelist's question for Kerry was whether he felt "a sense of responsibility" for his vote to authorize President Bush to go to war in Iraq. Kerry bobbed and weaved, avoiding a direct response.
When Edwards' turn came, he said, smiling, "That's the longest answer I ever heard to a yes-or-no question."
In contrast to Kerry's New England reserve, Edwards is an expressive Southerner in the mold of Clinton or a televangelist. At an event with apparel-union members in New York City's garment district Monday, a middle-aged woman named Agnes Wong lamented the outsourcing of her job and her worries about educating her children.
Edwards gave her a hug. "I take it personally," he said. |
