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Politics : John EDWARDS for President -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (299)	2/20/2004 3:48:40 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 1381

John Edwards: Populist or Opportunist? The conventional wisdom is that Edwards has kept himself alive by turning up the heat on Kerry's trade record. Kerry, Edwards notes, voted for NAFTA, the 1993 trade agreement believed by globalization critics to be a primary source of pain for the manufacturing sector in this country. The message apparently played well in Wisconsin, where Edwards stressed his opposition to NAFTA and such trade deals before audiences. But as is so often the case with politics, things are more complicated than that. In fact, Edwards was not an elected official and no one seems to recall him participating in the debate as an activist or on any other level when NAFTA was passed in 1993. Also, there's scant evidence that he mentioned the subject in his 1998 campaign for senate. And, as the Kerry campaign pointed out yesterday, Edwards failed to even mention the topic of trade in his major economic address at Georgetown University last June. In a Charlotte Observer article under the headline "Edwards Vague on NAFTA remarks," reporter Mark Johnson wrote: "When the treaty passed, however, Edwards was still practicing law in Raleigh, and his limited political involvement as a regular citizen was reflected in a record of voting in about half the elections. When asked over the weekend whether, in his 1998 Senate campaign, he only talked about NAFTA in response to questions, Edwards said: 'That's fair.'" Yesterday, Kerry spokesman David Wade said: "I hope John Edwards won't try to invent a distinction without a difference, but voters are smart, they know that both John Kerry and John Edwards will fight to include labor and environmental provisions in our trade agreements. Both John Kerry and John Edwards voted for trade with China and both would enforce the protections Bill Clinton negotiated that George Bush ignores. John Edwards talks about NAFTA, but he wasn't in the Senate when it was passed, said nothing at the time and can't point to a declarative statement against it when he ran for the Senate. After running a good campaign, you'd hate to see him reinvent himself as a single issue candidate campaigning on a single issue he's never said much about." Journalists and pundits are too quick to use the term "negative attack" to describe legitimate differences of opinion among candidates. It is completely legitimate to point out policy differences. But Edwards, who has mostly run an impeccably upbeat campaign, might be walking a fine line here. Of course, there are two sides to every story. And I gave the Edwards campaign ample opportunity to give it.