It was a busy week for Boston area Edwards supporters, with a bunch going on both on and off line. Edwards did great, IMHO, at the debate a week ago in across the border in New Hampshire and he made an appearance in Boston, with the Small Change for Big Change appearance at the Lir in Boston.
Here's what was going on over at Boston for Edwards last week:
Julia wrote her entry on Why I Support Edwards, her's entitled Why I Support Edwards- From the Heart
But Massachusetts has one thing in common with John Edwards. They know that a "right to life" exists. The first of the "great inalienable rights" guaranteed by the Constitution and our Founding Fathers, the "right to life" is essential to our humanity. Without it, nothing else is possible.
The rest of America seems to have forgotten that. John and Elizabeth Edwards know it. And I do too. I’d like to help this country remember. So I am working for John Edwards because I want others, everywhere in America, to have the same opportunity I did.
Robert had a post on Edwards and the original Marshall Plan.
Yet American leadership during this crucial period in history is mostly absent, or at least distracted by other issues. We have engaged in a war of choice in Iraq that in one year costs us almost as much as the entire Marshall Plan. At the same time, we remain stingy with our foreign aid, giving only 17 cents in aid for every $100 our economy produces. How far we have come since Marshall’s vision of enlightened investment in a better world! If America continues to shirk its responsibilities, we will be abdicating a leadership role in the globalized world of the 21st century, to our own detriment.
And that’s why I found John Edwards comments at the end of his last debate so heartening. When asked what he highest priority would be when he got into office, he said it would be to "re-establish America's moral authority in the world", saying that in comparison other issues "become less important and subservient." It was a subtle answer, and perhaps one not well suited to the quick sound bite. However, it reflects exactly the kind of positive reengagement with the world that American needs.
We had our take on the Small Change for Big Change event, including video from the event.
And an examination of the parallels between parallels between JRE and RFK drawn from the NY Times article in a post by me.
Exiling oneself from Washington and being subsequently reborn as a more candid and compassionate politician is an old and popular plotline in Democratic politics. Robert Kennedy built his legend on the same idea in the mid-1960s; more recently, Bill Bradley and Al Gore have adopted similar themes. Edwards clearly sees himself in this vein, and his conversion appears to have been sincere, if not entirely original.