John thought the Freidman column was "weak." :>) Edwards is turning out to be a pretty boy from the south that has no legs in this race. He had better get back to running for Senator.
Make-or-Break Period Begins for Edwards as He Woos Iowans
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
IOWA FALLS, Aug. 14 - Senator John Edwards's campaign bus pulled into the parking lot of the Camp David restaurant here today, delivering him to the ninth of 29 Iowa campaign appearances he has planned over six days, ending on Monday with the Polk County barbecue.
And in case Iowans miss Mr. Edwards on the ground during what will be the most extended stretch he has spent here as a presidential contender, they can find him on their television sets. Mr. Edwards has taken to the airwaves with an unusually early barrage of commercials, looking engagingly into the camera as he introduces himself as the son of a millworker ? and disparages President Bush as the privileged son of the wealthy.
Just three months ago, Mr. Edwards was viewed by many Democrats as a formidable fresh new face, with campaign skills that his aides compared to Bill Clinton's. He had collected enough money at private fund-raisers to establish himself as one of the best financed Democrats in the field, though at the cost of keeping him away from voters.
But this has become a make-or-break moment for Mr. Edwards.
Amid signs that he is having difficulty finding his place in a crowded field, he now suggests that the reaction to his aggressive schedule of appearances and television advertisements ? here and, next week, with a six-day swing through New Hampshire ? will help determine whether he will proceed with his White House bid, or seek to return to the Senate.
Mr. Edwards said in an interview today that he was confident that voters would embrace who he was and what he was saying. But Mr. Edwards, a North Carolina Democrat, left open the possibility that he might defer his presidential race until another year, and run for re-election in 2004 to the Senate seat he had all but flatly said he was giving up.
"The next two to three months are very important," he said, "because our plan all along was to spend the first seven months focused on fund-raising and developing all the ideas that I wanted to present to the American people, and now I'm out making that case to voters both personally and on television. And yes, I expect it to have an impact."
Popping M&M's as his two children frolicked around him on the campaign bus, Mr. Edwards said, "I think I'll get a personal feel as to how people are responding to me and my message and what I'm about, and I will start getting some empirical evidence of how people are responding."
The next two months could provide the answer to what has become the central question of his candidacy: Are the political and personal skills that so many politicians have praised in Mr. Edwards strong enough to overcome what many Democrats see as a light political résumé in a contest where experience and stature seem pivotal?
This burst of activity by Mr. Edwards comes as many Democrats have wondered aloud about his slow drift through these early days of the contest, and as pressure has grown on him in North Carolina to make a firm decision so Democrats can field a candidate for his Senate seat.
"I'm a little despondent that it looks like maybe he's not leading," said Colleen Johnson, an unemployed electronic specialist and Edwards volunteer who said she had telephoned 40 people to go to what turned out to be a modestly attended forum this morning in Mason City. "But there are so many people who still don't know about him."
If his unsteady start has worried some supporters, it has surprised his opponents.
"He was one of the ones I was worried about earlier," said Jerry Crawford, chairman of the Iowa campaign for Senator John Kerry, a Democratic contender. "Not now. The big mystery of this campaign is why he isn't connecting. He's a very talented guy. He's got great raw material."
Mr. Edwards repeatedly, and at times heatedly, dismissed suggestions ? expressed in some cases by Iowans who turned up to see him ? that he looked too young or did not have enough experience to defeat President Bush.
Still, Mr. Edwards may well be the only baby boomer in the nation who makes a point of telling everyone he meets that he just celebrated his 50th birthday. He pointed to his years on the Senate intelligence Committee, as well as the proposals he has made to guard against terrorist attacks in the United States, as evidence of his credibility on the issue of experience.
"I will have been in the Senate for six years, having visited most of these places in the world, met with these leaders in most places of the world, worked on these issues," Mr. Edwards said. "And as a result I know how the Congress works; I know what needs to be done to get things accomplished in the Congress. But I have not become inside-the-Beltway Washington."
Mr. Edwards said he had deliberately decided to spend the first seven months of this year raising money, following advice he said he received from, among others, a Republican: Senator John McCain of Arizona, who ran for president in 2000.
He said he did this realizing polls would show him lagging in the field, as they have. These polls tend not to be predictive of the final outcome of the race, but they influence the behavior of campaign contributors, Democratic stalwarts looking for candidates to endorse, and coverage decisions by newspapers and television stations.
"Most voters are still not paying attention, and they will start paying attention in 60 or 90 days," Mr. Edwards said. "And by the way, this is precisely what John McCain told me. This was three months ago ? he said, `I didn't start moving till the fall.' He said you want to have a clear view of what to say, be able to say it clearly and strongly and spend enormous times in New Hampshire during those last three months."
In many ways, the John Edwards who is now being presented to voters in his television advertisements and campaign speeches ? which vary little from stop to stop ? offers at least some stylistic contrasts with his rivals. Mr. Edwards invokes his father the millworker and his grandmother the sharecropper tirelessly as he attacks Mr. Bush's heritage more harshly than perhaps anyone else in the race.
"If I was to describe the biggest difference between George Bush and those of us, it is one thing: wealth," Mr. Edwards said to about 30 people in a front yard in Waverly after arriving in a campaign bus that was as long as the house he was visiting. "He comes from a world where wealth is inherited, not earned. In many ways, I am the opposite of George Bush. I'm the walking, living example of the American Dream."
The appeal was clear when he spoke to an Iowa labor forum in Des Moines on Tuesday.
"As I mentioned earlier, my dad worked in a mill his whole life," he said. "George W. Bush comes from a completely difference place. He comes from a place where wealth is inherited, not earned. He believes that if you take care of people at the top, the whole country does better."
As ferocious as he is on the subject of Mr. Bush, he is in many ways a cautious campaigner. He has avoided mixing it up with his Democratic opponents, saying in an interview that voters are sharp enough to spot the differences between them. Although he voted for the Iraq war, he does not tend to volunteer that position, which is unpopular with many of his audiences around here. But on being asked, he will say: "I take responsibility for it; I stand by it."
Mr. Edwards said his decision to ground his candidacy in his biography was a way of communicating to voters his commitment to issues like his proposal to expand health care, and improve education by encouraging teachers to locate in disadvantaged areas. There is, though, one part of his life that he does not invoke: the death of his 16-year-old son, Wade, in an automobile accident in 1996.
The subject came up when Mr. Edwards made an unscheduled stop at a picket line at a tannery near Charles City, when he asked one of the striking workers, Wendell Love, how many children he had. Mr. Love told him of losing his fifth child, a daughter, 10, seven years before.
Mr. Edwards's face turned gray. "My oldest one died seven years ago," he said, holding Mr. Love's hand.
"I'm sorry," Mr. Love said. "We can make it. We'll make it."
Mr. Edwards looked back at him. "It's with you all the time," he said.
It is still too early to try to measure how his candidacy is being affected by the television advertisements ? intimate close-ups of a Mr. Edwards, the kind of advertisements that consultants typically run only with the most personable of candidates. At the very least, it is making a man who even his own aides used to complain was a stranger in Iowa more of a familiar figure.
When Mr. Edwards turned up at that picket line, Mr. Love greeted him with great excitement before telling him about his daughter. "I seen you on TV," he said. "You are a movie star!"
But a more telling response might have come from James Vawn, a retired farmer, who was at the State Fair the other day. Mr. Vawn, who said he was leaning toward Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, said he had seen Mr. Edwards's commercials, and had come away more worried than impressed.
"He looks almost too young to be president," Mr. Vawn said.
nytimes.com |
