William Safire: Kerry opts for comfort
By William Safire (NYT)
Thursday, July 8, 2004
iht.com
WASHINGTON: Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, and Senator John Edwards, a North Carolina Democrat, were born in the same hospital in the small town of Seneca, South Carolina, within two years of each other. It occurred to me that Graham would have a good feel for the impact that John Kerry's selection of Edwards as his running mate might have on voters in the South and in small towns.
"In an election where a handful of states determine the winner," Graham says, "the vice presidential pick has the most effect if your choice can carry a state that's crucial. I don't see North Carolina or South Carolina going for Kerry because of Edwards." What about Louisiana, which went for Bush in 2000 but for a Democrat, Bill Clinton, before that? "John Kerry is no Clinton. John Edwards doesn't repair the damage of having the most liberal senator, and from Massachusetts, the presidential nominee." Forget about delivering a swing state; what of Edwards' delivering a shot in the arm to a currently lifeless Kerry campaign? "If Edwards gets their base excited, the theory is that he will help in terms of energy," allows Graham. "But this is not a pick of confidence. Edwards was chosen to fill the gap. Kerry's campaigning gap is that he has no charisma, that he doesn't relate well to average people.
"This is Kerry saying, 'I know I've got this problem, and I hope this will fix it.' But there's no such thing as a charisma transplant."
Graham is properly partisan, but offers an insight about a "pick of confidence." When Bush chose Cheney in 2000, that expressed confidence in victory: Cheney was seen not primarily as a campaigner, but as an active participant in the coming administration, which even his fervent detractors admit he has been.
Bush was then filling in a gap, too - his foreign policy inexperience - but his pick was directed at governing, not campaigning.
Consider Kerry's choices for a running mate. Senator John McCain turned it down both privately and publicly, and Senator Joe Biden didn't want the job enough. Senator Bob Graham might have helped in Florida, but his diary obsession would have generated sustained media derision. Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack would have triggered a nationwide "Who?"
The serious alternative was Representative Dick Gephardt. The Missourian abandoned by union labor in the primaries is solid and experienced in both domestic and foreign affairs, and might even have delivered Missouri, but he is the Man from Dullsville. He would have been Kerry's Cheney - the pick of confidence. Kerry, in the most important political choice of his life, chose Edwards. Though youthful in appearance, he is 51, a fresh face but no spring chicken. He is demonstrably adept in persuading juries. Though with only five years in public office, he is a quick study and has learned to half-answer and slip around hard questions as well as many lifelong politicians.
He is also the happy class warrior, the smoothest divisive force in politics today. Throughout the primaries, the potent Edwards message was "two Americas," haves vs. have-nots, richies vs. the rest. In Tuesday's coordinated statements, "class" was the theme: both the patrician Kerry and the multimillionaire Edwards took pains to identify themselves with the "struggling" middle class. Kerry embraced this populist pitch as "the center of this campaign."
In the vice presidential debate, Democrats expect the on-message Edwards to run rings around the stolid Cheney. (But if I were a TV producer, I'd find a film of the Joe Louis-Billy Conn championship fight to run after the debate.) Though the GOP will dwell on Edwards' inexperience, he will be a campaign asset, countering the recent sharp rise in Kerry's "unfavorable" ratings.
A larger question looms that confronts every presidential nominee: What if he wins and dies in office? In making his decision on Tuesday, Kerry should have kept that criterion of "the best man ready to take over" uppermost in his mind.
In my view, he failed that test. In the choice between the Democrat most ready to be president and the Democrat who would enliven a stalled campaign, Kerry played it safe and chose the political hottie, Edwards. Not, as South Carolina's Graham says, "the confident pick." |
