WASHINGTON — There’s losing. There’s losing honorably. And then there’s John Edwards.
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Then there is John Edwards. He’s not going to be president either. He stays in the race because, with the Democrats’ proportional representation system, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton might end up in a very close delegate race — perhaps allowing an also-ran with, say, 10 percent of the delegates to act as kingmaker at the convention.
It’s a prize of sorts, it might even be tradeable for a Cabinet position. But at considerable cost. His campaign has been a spectacle.
Edwards has made much of his renunciation of his Iraq War vote. But he has not stopped there. His entire campaign has been an orgy of regret and renunciation.
– As senator, he voted in 2001 for a bankruptcy bill that he now denounces.
– As senator, he voted for storing nuclear waste in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. Twice. He is now fiercely opposed.
– As senator, he voted for the Bush-Kennedy No Child Left Behind education reform. He now campaigns against it, promising to have it “radically overhauled.”
– As senator, he voted for the Patriot Act, calling it “a good bill … and I am pleased to support it.” He now attacks it.
– As senator, he voted to give China normalized trade relations. Need I say? He now campaigns against liberalized trade with China as a sellout of the middle class to the great multinational agents of greed, etc.
Breathtaking. People can change their minds about something. But everything? The man served one term in the Senate. He left not a single substantial piece of legislation to his name, only an astonishing string of votes on trade, education, civil liberties, energy, bankruptcy and, of course, war that now he not only renounces but inveighs against.
Today he plays the avenging angel, engaged in an “epic struggle” against the great economic malefactors that “have literally,” he assures us, “taken over the government.” He is angry, embodying the familiar zeal of the convert, ready to immolate anyone who benightedly holds to any revelation other than the zealot’s very latest.
Nothing new about a convert. Nothing new about a zealous convert. What is different about Edwards is his endlessly repeated claim that the raging populist of today is what he has always been. That this has been the “cause of my life,” the very core of his being, ingrained in him on his father’s knee or at the mill or wherever, depending on the anecdote he’s telling. You must understand: This is not politics for him. “This fight is deeply personal to me. I’ve been engaged in it my whole life.”
Except for his years as senator, the only public office he’s ever held. The audacity of the all-my-life trope is staggering. By his own endlessly self-confessed record, his current pose is a coat of paint newly acquired. His claim that it is an expression of his inner soul is a farce.
A cynical farce that is particularly galling to left-liberals of real authenticity. “The one (presidential candidate) that is the most problematic is Edwards,” Sen. Russ Feingold told The Post-Crescent in Appleton, Wis., “who voted for the Patriot Act, campaigns against it. Voted for No Child Left Behind, campaigns against it. Voted for the China trade deal, campaigns against it. Voted for the Iraq War. … He uses my voting record exactly as his platform, even though he had the opposite voting record.”
It profits a man nothing to sell his soul for the whole world. But for 4 percent of the Nevada caucuses?
January 25, 2008
And then there’s John Edwards
May 6, 2007
Reversals on war, education and Yucca Mountain
Democrat John Edwards, his party’s 2004 vice presidential nominee, underwent a tough grilling Sunday on ABC’s This Week about his evolution from what host George Stephanopoulos called “hawkish new Democrat” to “ultra-liberal.” Click here to see a video clip.
Stephanopoulos said Edwards has changed his mind about a number of positions he supported when he was a senator from North Carolina — starting with the Iraq war but also including bankruptcy reform, free trade with China, the No Child Left Behind education law and storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
A few of their exchanges:
• Edwards has called his 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq war a mistake. He was asked about a Boston Globe report that he urged privately in 2004 that he and nominee John Kerry stand by their votes and not admit to making a mistake. Edwards said that when the election was over and he had time to reflect, “I thought it was my personal responsibility to be honest.”
• Edwards said he did not remember saying his vote for No Child Left Behind was a mistake. He said the law “needs to stay in place” but it should be changed because “the testing regimen is too intrusive.”
• Stephanopoulos said Edwards criticized offshore tax shelters in the 2004 election but went to work the next year for an investment group with hedge funds incorporated in the Cayman Islands, which get tax breaks. “I learned about this after the fact. I didn’t know it at the time,” Edwards said. He said he remains opposed to offshore tax shelters and would try to eliminate them as president. He said his pay from the Fortress Investment Group will be on his next financial disclosure report.
• Edwards did not address the trade, bankruptcy or Yucca Mountain issues on the show. Nevada has moved to the beginning of the nomination process with caucuses scheduled Jan. 19. Majorities there oppose the nuclear waste repository.
USA Today On Politics 5/6/07
http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2007/05/edwards_grilled.html
March 20, 2007
Muslim children should not be taught in madrassas
Edwards, an S.C. native and former U.S. senator from North Carolina, told a crowd of about 300 at Benedict College the U.S. should work to educate children of poor and developing nations, including Muslim children in Africa.
“America shouldn’t be following. We should be leading that effort for kids to actually be educated in Africa in the Muslim world. Not taught in madrassas where they’re taught to hate the United States of America,” Edwards said.
A madrassa is an Islamic religious school. Some say the schools foster terrorism.
A magazine article earlier this year claimed U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., one of Edwards’ top competitors for the Democratic nomination, was educated in a madrassa while he was living in Indonesia as a child. That report was later debunked. Obama attended school in Indonesia, but it was a secular, not religious, school.
Edwards’ visit to Columbia comes as his campaign threatens to fade from the list of “top tier” candidates seeking the Democratic nomination. Even in his native state, the only state he won in the 2004 presidential primary campaign, recent polls show him firmly in third place, far behind U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and trailing or tied with Obama.
The State 3/20/07
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/politics/16937128.htm
