Can anyone explain the linger- ing campaign of former Sen. John Edwards? A less-apt candidate for the U.s. presidency would be hard to find. He’s unsubstantial yet protean – in a bad way. Standing next to Barack “Empty Suit” Obama, Edwards seems like a craven panderer. Standing next to Hillary “Freudian Train-wreck” Clinton, Edwards seems angry and resentful.
Yet Edwards carries on.
Nothing the man says rings true. Having read the polls that voters in New Hampshire worry about schools, Edwards says the federal government should underwrite universal pre-kindergarten and fund a statist higher education program called “College for Everyone.”
He seems to have a poor understanding of who will pay for universal university education. His vaporous position papers suggest he’ll increase taxes on the “the rich.” But who knows? Like most statists, Edwards uses a definition of “rich” that reaches down into the middle-class when circumstances warrant.
Exploiting class resentments is something that Edwards – who made his millions as a personal-injury lawyer – seems to do naturally. He told one primary-state newspaper: “I do not believe it is okay for the United States of America to have 37 million people living in poverty.”
I do not believe it is okay. That phrase, like its speaker, is so sanctimonious that it beggars belief. But it’s not unusual for him. Through the early debates, Edwards repeated the illogical argument that his changing position on the war in Iraq shows more integrity than his opponents’ consistent positions – for or against.
There he stands, smarmily, an ambulance-chaser presenting his case to a jury of rubes. Maybe he believes that Americans want to be told lies by a striving yuppie. Maybe he is blind to the greed, guilt, and venality of the fellow trial lawyers who support him. But some things should register, even with a solipsist.
Your wife – by all accounts a good and loyal partner ~ is sick with cancer, man! Put your vanity aside, give up this empty enterprise, and tend to her.
