From John Edwards, lessons on celebrity and politics

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/25/AR2010012502833.html

"Within six years of being elected to the Senate and with no previous political experience, Edwards was the vice presidential nominee. He was on the ticket with John Kerry, who lost, it's true, but he was still on the ticket. As Spiro Agnew or, for that matter, Eliot Spitzer proved, in politics nothing is certain.

"My early impressions of Edwards faded to disillusion as his colleagues and friends described him as oddly incurious, averse to homework, often unprepared. When he launched his second presidential campaign, we met again -- and I was dumbfounded by what he did not seem to know about poverty, his proclaimed field of expertise. The man was mostly smile."

Interesting take on the person that was the darling candidate for many progressives. I'm particularly surprised by the next to last sentence above -- that Edwards apparently did not know much about poverty.

about him but because I realize more and more that I know so little about him."

snip

"John Edwards. He's not a scandal. He's a lesson"


Excellent read. Thanks for posting

although Kucinich was the only one with guts enough to tell us the only one that would actually work was single payer. I thought Edwards was enough of a schmoozer to get his through Congress.

Edwards grew up lower middle class and parlayed that into a successful legal career. How could he possibly know about poverty? It's something you have to experience.

Sadly, a lot of people in this country have been or are getting that experience.

I can't recall any of the details ... I just remember vague references to "two Americas" and all that. After his "work" for Fortress, I thought it was mostly empty rhetoric.

It was to bring in the public option to compete with private insurance companies, so a starve the beast could take place. It was mandated, so that everyone, even healthy people paid in. This was one of the sticking points between Edwards and Obama supporters. Obama supporters said that Obama required no mandate.

The public option was a way to get to single payer without shutting down for profit insurance companies and throwing those who worked for them out of work. He also said he would do whatever he had to, to get it done, including taking away health care from those who worked in Congress and the Senate.

zalinda

If what he says is true, Edwards would not have been the success he was. He won cases which a lot of other lawyers would not consider taking. I know I read an article that he would work well into the night, and during his closings did not use notes.

From Wiki:
On social policy, Edwards supports abortion rights and has a universal health care plan that requires all Americans to purchase health care insurance,<35> "requires that everybody get preventive care,"<36> and requires employers to provide health care insurance or be taxed to fund public health care.<37> He supports a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants,<37> is opposed to a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage,<38> and supports the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).<39>

He has endorsed efforts to slow down global warming<40> and was the first presidential candidate to make his campaign carbon neutral.<41>


Again from Wiki:
In February 2005, Edwards headlined the "100 Club" Dinner, a major fundraiser for the New Hampshire Democratic Party. That same month, Edwards was appointed as director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for studying ways to move people out of poverty. That fall, Edwards toured ten major universities in order to promote "Opportunity Rocks!", a program aimed at getting youth involved to fight poverty.

On March 21, 2005, Edwards recorded his first podcast<52> with his wife. Several months later, in August, Edwards delivered an address to a potential key supporter in the Iowa caucus, the AFL-CIO in Waterloo, Iowa.

In the following month, Edwards sent an email to his supporters and announced that he opposed the nomination of Judge John G. Roberts to become Chief Justice of the United States. He was also opposed to the nomination of Justice Samuel Alito as an Associate Justice and Judge Charles Pickering's appointment to the Federal bench.

During the summer and fall of 2005, he visited homeless shelters and job training centers and spoke at events organized by ACORN, the NAACP and the SEIU. He spoke in favor of an expansion of the earned income tax credit, a crackdown on predatory lending, an increase in the capital gains tax rate, housing vouchers for racial minorities (to integrate upper-income neighborhoods), and a program modeled on the Works Progress Administration to rehabilitate the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina. In Greene County, North Carolina he unveiled the pilot program for College for Everyone, an educational measure he promised during his presidential campaign, in which prospective college students would receive a scholarship for their first year in exchange for ten hours of work a week. The College for Everyone program was canceled in July 2008.<53>


So to say he wasn't curious, or knew nothing about poverty, seems to be a biased "observation".


zalinda

Americans make rock stars out of the guy or gal(palin) that does not have experience or wisdom as say Kucinich. The media takes hold and Americans fantasize. Just look at Scott Brown.

but until Obama proves me wrong, I'll still insist Edwards would've been the best president out of the three front-runners.

I think Edwards would have got things done. We might not always have liked what he did, but he'd have done them. He's much more of a fighter for what he wants -- whether it's winning a lawsuit or boinking a staffer -- and I don't think Obama has determination. It's the difference between being a law professor and being a trial lawyer.

My experience with people in general is that we never really know what motivates them when they do stupid things, whether it's the Clinton and Edwards affairs or celebrities who drive drunk or the friend whose house suddenly has a for sale sign in front of it because he gambled away every cent of his eight-figure retirement nest egg. Sometimes even they don't know why they did it. That doesn't necessarily make them bad people, but it does mean they're capable of future acts of stupidity.

Then again, so are we all.



Even


Tansy Gold