On Campaign Trail, Edwards Combines Personal and Political
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Published: February 2, 2004
GEORGETOWN, S.C., Feb. 1 -- John Edwards had finished describing his mill worker father and growing up in North Carolina when he brought up, as he almost always does these days, "Real Solutions for America," his 61-page booklet detailing what he would do as president. Mr. Edwards spotted someone in his audience with a copy the other day, and asked him to hold it up for the crowd and the cameras.
"This is not pie-in-the-sky rhetoric," Mr. Edwards said. "I have laid out a very specific set of ideas for how we bring about these changes together."
In truth, though, Mr. Edwards, a former trial lawyer and first-term senator from North Carolina, is much more likely to show that booklet than to slog through the details in its pages. As he campaigns across the nation, drawing a portrait of an Edwards presidency, his has become a candidacy of broad brush strokes and biography, drawing attention more for his distinctive style than for substance .
As Mr. Edwards described it in campaign appearances and in an interview on his campaign bus on Sunday afternoon, that presidency would change the nation's tax system to move the burden away from the earned income of the middle and lower middle class and to the unearned income of the wealthy. He would expand the nation's health care system to guarantee coverage for all children. He would create a new Homeland Intelligence Agency to guard against intelligence shortcomings that he argued have left Americans at risk.
But to spend time with Mr. Edwards as he moves through South Carolina, toward a primary on Tuesday that his aides say will determine whether he remains in the presidential race this year, is to hear a candidate whom many Democrats describe as the most compelling politician in the field. He is able to use vivid language and big themes to move his audiences in a way that none of his opponents, except perhaps for Howard Dean, have been able to do.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/02/politics/campaign/02EDWA.html
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Edwards is worth taking another look at. He is the one candidate who has the ability to capture the imagination of the American people. People all over this country are saying the last time they felt this much hope for the future was when JFK and Clinton were running...those are pretty big shoes to fill, yet time and time again those names keep coming up when talking about the effect of John Edwards on the "people"
