The Washington Post has an interesting article up about John Edwards.
With overflow crowds and his populist economic message and his Internet-friendly campaign organization, John Edwards signaled this week that, if he has anything to say about it, the race for the Democratic presidential nomination will be about more than just Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. Edwards 2.0 is a revised version of his beta candidacy of 2004. He begins his second campaign for the White House with the kind of self-confidence that comes only from having tried and failed once before. “My biased self-perception is that both the campaign and what’s happened since then has had a maturing effect on me,” he said in an interview here Friday, adding: “I think that it’s just a calmness that’s different. There are also critical adjustments in his candidacy that position him to compete against Clinton and Obama, the party’s two unannounced glamour candidates of the moment. Edwards will be able to run to the left of Clinton in a party whose base has shifted leftward during the Bush presidency. And this time, questions about lack of experience will go first to Obama.
All very good points. Edwards has already positioned himself as the – or at least a major – center left candidate for the Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton is purposefully trying to appeal to the more moderate elements within the DP, Obama probably the same… Edwards breaks with that. The problem is not – in my opinion – that a center left candidate cannot win the nomination of the Democratic Party. I think that it is quite possible. The problem is that – in my opinion – such a center left candidate will never be President of the U.S. Well, never, at least not for now. The American people as a whole is simply not ‘liberal’ enough for that. Besides, the ones who decide who will become the next President of the U.S. will be moderates c.q. centrists c.q. independents. Not the ‘liberal base’, nor the ‘conservative’ one. Obviously, being a (moderate) liberal conservative leads me to disagree with Edwards every now and then, to say the least. An example as provided by the WaPo:
Edwards also refuses to let his domestic ambitions be held hostage to the words “fiscal discipline.” Though he acknowledges that the deficit has become a problem under Bush, he said the bigger priority is investing in health care, alternative energy sources, and programs designed to strengthen the middle class and attack poverty. His ultimate goal may be to hold the deficit roughly where it is or slightly lower, rather than seeking a substantial reduction. “If we do energy, health care, serious middle-class poverty proposals, then I think we’re talking about just trying to keep the deficit in check,” he said.
I understand where he is coming from, but having a somewhat normal deficit should – in my Dutch opinion – be priority number one for any administration, everywhere. Fiscal responsibility is Step One. If I were American, I would object to Edwards’s view on the deficit: I would argue that it should not just be ‘contained’, a future President should be dedicated to exterminate the deficit alltogether, or at least to dramatically reduce the deficit. What’s happening now is that future generations will be forced to pay off the debt caused by this generation (or better said administration). That is not a ‘present’ I would like to give to my children and grandchildren. Edwards has quite clearly grown up. Proof?
Edwards said he no longer believes, as he once did, that presidential campaigns turn on issues and policy positions. Instead they are forums for demonstrating the capacity to inspire and lead. “I think presidential elections are a very different breed of cat,” he said in June. “I think they’re much more about character and leadership and integrity than they are about a particular issue.”
And I would agree with that, at least to a degree. One cannot run on an ’empty’ platform, but one of the most important aspects seems, indeed, to be whether or not voters consider one to be a good and inspiring leader. Lastly, if Edwards would ask little old me for advise, I would tell him to try to appeal to moderates / centrists more. Without them, he will never finish better than second-best.
P.S.
This post and “looking back” have been published at my own blog first. Not because I want to drive up my hits, but because TMV was temporarily offline
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