Can Edwards Rise Again?
URL:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36947-2003Jul10.html
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 10, 2003; 8:31 AM
Stop the presses: A journalist is saying something nice about John Edwards!
It's not that the media have been particularly mean to the North Carolina senator. But compared to last year, when he was touted in a string of magazine pieces as the Democrats' great southern hope, Edwards is now treated as something of a non-entity.
He is--gasp--not in the top tier.
This is in part because Howard Dean has been sucking up most of the media oxygen lately, and in part because Edwards doesn't seem to be getting much traction.
A University of New Hampshire poll the other day had Edwards in seventh place, with just 2 percent, and trailing two candidates who aren't running (Hillary Clinton and Wesley Clark). John Kerry (18 percent) and Dean (16 percent) were leading the Granite State pack.
Edwards still has the assets that first made him what Time called the Dems' "golden boy": Young, smooth, telegenic and most of all, from the South -- important because it's no accident that the last two Democratic presidents, Clinton and Carter, drawled their way into office.
He's also raised plenty of money, although the press now tends to minimize that by sniffing that much of it comes from his trial-lawyer pals.
On the down side, he's a first-term senator with no foreign-policy experience in a post-9/11 world. And he's not all that popular in his home state. And he's trying to hedge his bets by running for his Senate seat at the same time, giving him a fallback position if his White House candidacy collapses.
His biggest problem, though, is that the media have relegated him to that back-of-the-bus second tier. Which is why this piece by Slate's William Saletan is worth perusing:
"Unless we learn something awful about Howard Dean in the next several months, the Democratic race for president will probably come down to him and one other, more openly centrist candidate. If money, experience, and military service govern the decision, that candidate could be John Kerry. But there's one other candidate I can see filling the centrist slot, surviving the Dean insurgency, and giving President Bush a tougher fight. That candidate is John Edwards.
"I know, Edwards has served just four and a half years in the Senate. And he's a trial lawyer, and he's rich, and he's unfamiliar with the nuances of some policy debates, and he's got no military record. I won't spend this column pointing out that Bush's résumé was equally thin when he ran for president, that he had less foreign policy experience than Edwards does now, that Bush and Kerry are rich, or that Bush is still unfamiliar with the nuances of most policy debates.
"The journalistic case for Edwards is that he's got the most interesting message in the race, distinct from Dean's and Bush's, plus the talent to make it stick. He'd put up a hell of a race against Dean and, if he prevailed, a hell of a race against Bush.
"Edwards doesn't have Dean's fearless clarity or his fire at the podium. What he has instead is a working-class background (unlike Dean, who grew up on Park Avenue), an ear for plain language, candor about his caveats, and a Clintonesque knack for relating to people and engaging complex issues."
But does he have a Clintonesque talent for winning elections?
The New Republic is skeptical about Edwards's latest cause -- against corporate expensing of stock options:
"Why is John Edwards so obsessed with the corporate accountability? In the last poll in which the issue even appears--back in January--a mere 2 percent of respondents identified it as one of the most important problems facing the country. (By comparison, 51 percent fingered the economy, 31 percent terrorism, and 27 percent health care.) That's probably why Democrats like Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt have no compunction about abandoning policy no-brainers like expensing stock options in exchange for the support of various Silicon Valley moguls.
"Edwards, by contrast, has featured corporate accountability as a signature campaign theme. . . . So what gives? The answer, as Slate's Will Saletan has suggested, is that Edwards doesn't care so much about corporate accountability per se.
"In fact, Edwards isn't even really making an economic critique. He's making a cultural critique, and the corporate accountability issue just happens to be the most convenient--and tactically sophisticated--way of framing it. According to Edwards, the difference between people like you and him and people like the president and all those corrupt CEOs is that we have values and they don't.
"Will any of this work? Tough to say."
The New York Times takes the pulse in North Carolina:
"Senator John Edwards's fifth annual walk along the beach lasted only about a quarter-mile, what with a hot sun beating down and a horde of journalists in tow. But at every other step, it seemed, his constituents hit him with another complaint.
"Why didn't he support the troops? asked one soldier's mother. 'I did,' Mr. Edwards, a Democrat, assured her. Why didn't he do something about the economy? asked an out-of-work man. Mr. Edwards steered him to an aide who promised to help him find a job.
"Then there were those who had a more pointed concern: where on earth did Mr. Edwards, a freshman senator, get off running for the Democratic nomination for president?
"'He just needs to stay in North Carolina more instead of running around the country,' said Paul Stout, 51, a businessman from Asheboro. 'He ought to stay at home like Elizabeth Dole for awhile, then test the waters. There's too many Democrats out there now anyway.'
"For Mr. Edwards, 50, his home state may not be the coziest place now."
Nothing like having a strong home base.
The Raleigh News & Observer says the senator is coming under pressure to fish or cut bait on his reelection:
"Edwards acknowledged that he could wait until late February to make a decision on the Senate seat during a TV interview that ran this spring in New Hampshire, host of the traditional first presidential primary.
"If Edwards waited until February, he might be able to regroup in time to run a competitive race for re-election, with the benefit of a national fund-raising base and publicity garnered during his presidential bid.
"Many Democratic insiders, however, say that scenario is unfair to others who might want to run for Edwards' seat.
"While attending a fund-raiser for Edwards last month, Erskine Bowles, who ran unsuccessfully for Senate last year, said he would have to start raising money and building an organization about Labor Day -- Sept. 1 -- to make another credible run."
Ron Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times wonders if Dean can avoid the fate of previous mavericks:
"Obscurity. Electricity. Momentum. Opportunity. Disappointment.
"For more than a quarter of a century, that has been the life cycle for the sort of insurgent presidential candidacy that former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean has fashioned in the race for the 2004 Democratic nomination.
"From Democrats Gary Hart, Paul Tsongas, Jerry Brown and Bill Bradley to Republican John McCain, candidates who have run as outsiders -- criticizing their party's direction -- have stunned the political world by generating more excitement and amassing more support than appeared possible when they entered the race, as Dean has done in recent weeks.
"But since Jimmy Carter rode the post-Watergate demand for reform to the White House in 1976, every subsequent insurgent candidate has failed to win his party's nomination. Each lost to a candidate who had greater support among the party establishment. Dean's ability to raise money quickly off the Internet provides him a critical asset unavailable to earlier outsiders, and he also may benefit because none of his rivals has emerged as the favorite of the Democratic elite.
"But even with such advantages, experts say, Dean still faces many of the same challenges that have derailed previous insurgents."
The Wall Street Journal takes its turn at the can-Dean-be-stopped story:
"Party leaders fear the antiwar, anti-tax-cuts candidate would drag down other Democrats if he is at the top of the November 2004 ballot.
"But to try to do that now, rival camps have decided, risks a boomerang effect boosting Mr. Dean's outsider appeal. With few voters other than party devotees tuned in, the candidates so far are making their anti-Dean pitches quietly, to individuals and pro-Democratic groups.
"The Dean campaign all but dares Democratic foes to bring it on. 'When they attack us, we tend to grow,' says campaign manager Joe Trippi, citing spurts in money and supporters after past volleys from Sen. John Kerry and from the party's centrist Democratic Leadership Council."
The Boston Globe looks at a Dean gamble that worked:
"It was 3:30 a.m. on Sunday, June 29, when four political aides to Howard Dean made a decision that helps explain the recent success of the Democratic presidential contender and illuminates the campaign's future plans.
"Buoyed by an unexpected haul of $6 million in campaign donations, much of it rolling in during the five days that had elapsed since the former Vermont governor formally launched his candidacy, campaign manager Joe Trippi and three Internet specialists decided to take a risk by posting the outline of a thermometer on their campaign website. The red reservoir at the bottom represented the cash already had on hand for the fund-raising quarter. The tip represented their goal: $6.5 million.
"When Dean woke up three hours later, he logged onto his website, saw the gauge, and immediately called Trippi. 'Is this authorized?' Trippi quoted him as saying.
"The campaign manager explained the strategy to the candidate, and they watched the total creep up. By day's end, the campaign had received donations totaling $300,000, much of it via the Internet. The following day, June 30, the end of the three-month fund-raising period, the tip broke when another $800,000 flowed in. A day later, aides tallied another $400,000 in allowable donations arriving by 'snail mail,' the US Postal Service.
"The $7.5 million total was $100,000 more than raised by the top fund-raiser in the previous quarter, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina."
Sure beats hiring Jerry Lewis for a telethon.
We're told the Dean campaign is taking seriously the complaints of reporters that he's not the world's most friendly guy. Witness this Roger Simon interview with the candidate:
"Me: How important is it for a presidential candidate to be likeable?
"Dean: I think it's a big deal.
"Me: Pardon me?
"Dean: I think being likeable is a big deal.
"Me: Why? How do you make yourself likeable to the public?
"Dean: People have to believe that you know who you are. If they know who you are, then what you say has credibility. As Bill Clinton was quoted as saying, the people will vote for someone who is strong and wrong before they'll vote for someone who is weak and right. I think that is true. So part of the likeability stuff is not having a big smile and a glad hand; it's about having people respect you. That's very important. In fact, that's more important than having them like you. I mean, it's better to have both, but if they don't respect you, you're not going to win.
"Me: In front of an editorial board at the Roll Call newspaper in Washington earlier this year, you didn't come across as very likeable, at least to some in the room.
"Dean: When I get before editorial boards, I have three hours worth of stuff to cram into an hour with 25 people all of whom want to ask questions and so I tend not to be terribly likeable on editorial boards. They don't bring out my best because they're going to be tough and I am combative. And so when I get tough questions, I get combative. I'm not one to sort of lean back and say, 'Well, now, boys . . . ' you know, all that stuff, I don't do that."
Sticking by his guns.
The other shoe has dropped in the Kentucky governor's sex scandal, as the Louisville Courier-Journal reports:
"Gov. Paul Patton's former mistress was accused yesterday in a federal indictment of falsifying her qualifications for a Transportation Cabinet program for female and minority highway contractors.
"A grand jury indicted Tina Conner on one count of mail fraud, alleging that in July 2000 she misrepresented 'her net worth, her work experience and her ownership, control and operation' of a construction company formed by Conner and her husband at the time, Seth Conner. . . .
"The U.S. Justice Department and state Attorney General Ben Chandler began an investigation last September into Conner's allegations that Patton abused his power by giving her help during their two-year affair and retaliating against her after it ended.
"Patton has admitted the affair but denied abusing his power. He has said that after the cabinet questioned Conner's qualifications for the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program, he told Transportation Secretary James Codell that he believed she was a legitimate businesswoman. Codell has said that he does not recall the conversation."
Politicians who decline to run for office usually say they want to spend more time with their family, avoid shirking their current responsibilities or refuse to sully themselves with fundraising. But we have discovered an honest pol, in the Arizona Republic:
"Rep. Jeff Flake said yesterday that he will not run against Sen. John McCain in a Republican Senate primary next year, partly because he believes he'd get 'whipped' by the three-term senator.
"The 40-year-old Flake, R-Ariz., said he instead will seek re-election to a third and final term of his U.S. House seat. . . . 'After much soul-searching, I came to the conclusion I'd get whipped,' said Flake, who insisted he'd given a race against McCain serious thought. 'I don't think he was losing much sleep at night, anyhow.' "
Finally, a less-than-heartwarming story about marriage, from the New York Post:
"She has the itch to hitch -- and hitch and hitch and hitch.
"Manhattan prosecutors think that over the past two decades, an East Harlem woman has taken more than two-dozen husbands in a bizarre, lucrative and remarkably widespread immigration scam.
"Her name is Dezerrie Anne Cortez, a 40-year- old Lexington Avenue working mom who authorities say collected thousands of dollars from her illegal-immigrant husbands in return for 'tying the knots' to get them green cards and other perks.
"Trouble was, whenever she said, 'I do,' in these paper-only marriages, this Mother of all Brides neglected to ever say 'I don't,' prosecutors charge.
"And she would have remained happily multiply married if she hadn't allegedly applied for her 27th marriage license last year."
We're beginning to suspect that true love was not involved.
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