Listen - I'm pretty happy with ALL of our nominees, more or less. Some more, some less, but still - every single Democratic nominee (other than Gravel, who I worry would probably forget to take his medication from time to time) would make a spectacularly better president than what we've had to live through the last seven years.
Not a single one of our nominees is The Source of All Evil. (That, of course, would be Dick Cheney.) None of them are heroes riding in on white magical horses to save us all. None is Al Gore.
I've gone back and forth between Edwards and Obama for a while now and, even though Edwards is still the only candidate I've given money to so far, I think now I'm leaning toward Obama, for reasons I just won't get into right now. (Another diary, another day.)
But I am leaning towards John Edwards - for Attorney General of the United States.
Whoever becomes president in January of 2009 will have an ungodly amount of work ahead of them. If it's a Democrat, he or she will spend a great deal of their time trying to fix the damage done to this country by the Bush Crime Family regime. If it's - god forbid - a Republican... well, there's still plenty more that can be done to completely destroy this country and everything it stands for, even if it sometimes feels like that job has just about been completed.
The destruction is widespread across our entire government, of course, but perhaps in no area is it worse than in the Department of Justice. Justice has become so dysfunctional, so worthless, so NOT what Justice is supposed to be, that it will take a Herculean effort to clean it up and fix it. It will take much more than just firing all the little God Squad "lawyers" who've turned it into their own Junior Christian Extremist playground. Whoever runs Justice will have to completely redirect this behemoth, like a sober Exxon tanker captain trying to avoid an environmental disaster.
I can't think of a better person for this job than John Edwards.
There are so many areas where Edwards's "Two Americas" philosophy comes into play in the Justice Department, and sadly there is probably way too much work to be done than could be completed by just him, no matter how long he were to run the department. Our courts, our legal system, the very goals and intentions of Justice will practically have to be recreated. Talented non-political employees who fled in the wake of Bush/Cheney tyranny will need to be encouraged to return.
Edwards's intellect, integrity and boundless enthusiasm could make him our greatest ever A.G.; he would be the anti-Fredo. His leadership skills, and his emphasis on fair play and the common good of working people, would probably pay instant, noticeable dividends. His disdain for corporate influence and the "business as usual" insiders' way of doing things could actually make the Department of Justice no longer a laughable oxymoron.
We have so much work ahead of us, be it with Iraq, the environment, the economy, healthcare - it's all deadly important, and there's just so much of it that it almost seems insurmountable.
But none of that will matter, none of our positive accomplishments will last, if we don't turn this country back into a nation of laws, where no person is above the law, and where the Democratic ideals of justice, equality and the common good reign. For this reason, whoever becomes Attorney General of the United States in January of 2009 is as important as whoever is sworn in as president. And I don't think anyone could make a better A.G. than John Edwards.
But, if he ends up as president instead, I'm pretty sure I could live with that, too. ;-)