Edwards Formally Launches Presidential Campaign
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 16, 2003; 10:55 AM
ROBBINS, N.C., Sept. 16--After nine months of intensive campaigning, Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) formally launched his drive for the presidency here today, promising to repeal President Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and use the funds to help provide tax cuts and other programs for the middle class.
Edwards said the sum of Bush's economic policies represent a "war on work," in which monied interests have been rewarded at the expense of ordinary people, and said he would make the 2004 election a referendum on the president's priorities.
"George Bush's guiding principle," he said in the prepared text of his remarks, "is a twisted reflection of the American bargain: Instead of 'opportunity for all, special privileges for none,' he's given us 'opportunity for all the special interests.'"
The announcement, featuring high school bands and supporters bussed in from around the state, was staged in front of a textile mill in the small town where Edwards was raised.
The candidate said his goal as president would be to make "opportunity the birthright of every American."
Edwards said his campaign was built on "new ideas and old values" and he promised not only middle-class tax cuts but also health care for all children, prescription drugs for seniors and a year of college tuition for all students willing to work for it.
"America deserves a president who understands the people of this country, works for the people of this country, and will stop at nothing to create opportunity for all the people of this country," he said. "That's the great promise of America -- a fair shake for all, a free ride for none."
Edwards, who declared a week ago that he will not seek reelection to the Senate no matter what happens in the presidential race, has struggled through much of the year to make himself a more significant factor in the battle for the Democratic nomination. Like others in the race, he has been overshadowed by the grassroots energy surrounding the campaign of former Vermont governor Howard Dean.
Edward has been an impressive fundraiser, leading all Democrats in the first quarter with $7.4 million and then raising another $4.5 million in the second quarter. But the North Carolinian has barely made a dent on the voters in states with early primaries or caucuses, although there are signs that some Democrats are taking a new look at his candidacy.
Edwards's advisers say his hopes for winning the nomination now depend on his ability to finish high enough in Iowa and New Hampshire to be alive politically heading into the third week of primaries, pick up his first victory by winning in South Carolina on Feb. 3 and emerge as one of the finalists for the nomination.
At 50, Edwards is one of the least politically experienced elected officials in the Democratic race, having won his first election in 1998, when he took his Senate seat by defeating the Republican incumbent, then-senator Lauch Faircloth.
In winning as a Democrat in a southern state, Edwards immediately attracted national attention. Within two years, the man who made millions during a 20-year career as a trial lawyer was on Al Gore's shortlist for vice president, and after the 2000 election, was a much-talked-about potential presidential candidate with a fresh face, campaign skills and the kind of southern roots and southern base common to the last three Democrats elected president.
Then came Sept. 11, 2001, and with the world changed, Edwards found himself contemplating a presidential race with little experience in national security or foreign policy at a time when the war on terrorism was altering what many Americans wanted in a president.
Edwards, who supported Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq, talked some about foreign policy today, but the heart of his speech was a message of economic populism that coupled his personal biography as the son of working-class parents to policies that he said would provide "a better life for all who work for it."
Edwards said he had "spent enough time in Washington to know how much we need to change it," and invoked his career as a trial lawyer by adding, "I have spent my life working for people against those special interests. I know this fight. I am ready for this fight. And we will win this fight."
He charged Bush with seeking to eliminate taxes on unearned income and shifting the tax burden to working Americans. "It's wrong to tax millionaires less for playing the market than we tax soldiers for keeping America safe," he said. "It is time to put an end to this administration's war on work."
By eliminating the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, Edwards said he could provide tax cuts to "help working families buy a home, save for college or retirement and own a piece of the rock."
Edwards also said he would use some of those proceeds to start balancing the budget, although he has yet to lay out a detailed plan for getting there.
On national security issues, Edwards said it is crucial that the United States not fail in its effort to stabilize Iraq and said it is time for a president "who will unite the world."
He said not enough has been done to make the country safe in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He also assailed Attorney General John Ashcroft, charging that in the war on terrorism, the administration's policies threaten civil liberties and freedoms.
Edwards invoked his southern roots when he talked about the importance of trying to deal with racial issues and also in trying to persuade Democrats that he can compete against Bush everywhere.
"We will challenge him in every single state, in small towns and large: in every place where there is a plant that closed, or an after-school program that turned away kids, or a retirement account that is no longer enough to live on," he said. "We will force him to defend his failed policies in the East and the West, in the North, and right here in the South." |
