Stealth Missile
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The messenger: He's still smiling, but John Edwards is punching hard. Is Kerry watching?
By Melinda Henneberger
Newsweek
Sept. 27 issue - John Edwards never stops smiling as he bounds off the campaign bus, pumping his fist in the air and diving into the crowd with such abandon that an aide has to hold on to the back of his belt to keep him from falling forward. But from the minute he starts to talk, we see that that nice son of a mill worker can also push back with the best of them.
In recent weeks the Democratic vice presidential candidate's stump speech has gone from an easy-listening autobiographical commercial to a rat-a-tat indictment of the Bush administration. He compares George W. Bush to Ken Lay of Enron infamy, declares that "Iraq is a mess because of this president'' and seems to relish roughing up Dick Cheney: "Dick Cheney said if you vote for us and we're attacked again it's your fault,'' he roars. "What Dick Cheney said is un-American, and George Bush still has not denounced it.'' When he whips off his jacket, just as he and his audience are heating up, he turns even that cliche of political stagecraft into a fresh provocation, a pantomime of his challenge to Republicans: "You want a piece of me?'' And at every stop of a campaign swing through West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky last week, grateful Democrats practically cried with relief at the sight.
"You give 'em hell! You stand those bullies down!'' Retha Justice, a stay-at-home mom from Jeffersonville, Ind., told Edwards after hearing him speak at the airport in Louisville on Thursday night. After he moved on, though, the woman standing next to her on the rope line sighed. "I just wish Kerry were stronger,'' said the second woman, Marge Constan, a hospital worker from Louisville. "Edwards does a much better job of calling a smokescreen a smokescreen. In fact, I'm mad at Kerry because I want him to get elected so bad and I feel like he's blowing it.'' Glad as supporters were to see Edwards on the attack—at long last, they felt—some wondered out loud why they had yet to hear their nominee make the case against Bush with anything like the same clarity or force. Why, they wanted to know, couldn't Kerry take a few pointers from this guy?
Within the Kerry-Edwards campaign, the idea of an Edwards clinic on the art of the attack naturally brings on coughing spells. (For one thing, the junior partner was supposed to be Mr. Nice Guy and Kerry the one who knew how to get tough, remember?) So when asked whether Edwards ever talks to Kerry about his presentation, an aide exhales and says, "There is no subtle way to ask that question, is there?'' Yet Kerry is apparently confident enough to recognize that this is an area in which he has something to learn from his second. "They do talk about that sort of stuff and both think they can learn from each other's strengths,'' says a senior Kerry adviser. "Kerry is open to that.''
For weeks, Democrats have wondered where Edwards has been hiding—and whether he'd been disappeared because Kerry was afraid of being eclipsed. But in an interview on his campaign plane, Edwards argued that if he had slipped off the radar, it was only because he's been spending most of his time in smaller rural markets "where I can do the most good, even if I don't get as much national attention.'' He insisted he wouldn't want the kind of headlines Cheney's been getting: "He's said things that no candidate should ever want to break through on. He gets attention, but it's not good attention... When he said that about terrorism, it was inside him, and he just was not disciplined enough not to say it.''
Edwards and Kerry are on the phone several times a day, according to Elizabeth Edwards. Edwards himself says they talk mostly about "mechanics—everything from who should be on the plane with him and with me. And as a practical matter, he and I decide together on message. There are a lot of political types walking around with suggestions, but at the end of the day John and I know where we want to go.''
Asked if he had any qualms about going negative, he shakes his head. "I think what's happening in this country is an outrage, and the future of my country is at stake.'' His wife says that it's precisely because voters know him as an optimist that "he has the permission of the American people to say where we are now.'' If there's one thing he is unsure about, though, she says, it's his upcoming debate with the vice president—an appearance that the former trial attorney sees as the ultimate closing argument. "He's never done a two-person debate in his whole lifetime,'' she says, simultaneously vulnerable and on message.
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
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