Excerpt from a Washington Times editorial:
[John Edwards, the] onetime Democratic senator from North Carolina with the $400 haircut announced to fanfare that he is "suspending his campaign" to conduct a poverty tour of rural America, with a stated aim of examining and calling attention to poverty in the Mississippi Delta, Appalachia and the Rust Belt.I can’t believe Edwards really thinks his campaign “suspension” will fool anyone.
Mr. Edwards is not actually "suspending" anything. It turns out that the "suspension" is to last a mere three days, in which period Mr. Edwards will cover eight states and 12 cities in this purported "Road to One America." If it's Tuesday, this must be Grinders Switch.
That sounds to us just like the torrid pace of a presidential campaign. Mr. Edwards won't have much time to listen to the voices of poverty, that much is for sure. Also sure are the echoes of Robert F. Kennedy's celebrated tour of earlier poverty. But no, there's nothing here about a "campaign."
The only thing suspended is Mr. Edwards' willingness to answer questions about his personal wealth, given his fiery affection for populism. Surely it's only coincidental that the tour sounds and smells like the leg of a campaign, that "tours" work wonders for some campaigns and that Mr. Edwards now seeks something to cure a sincerity deficit.
Mr. Edwards will be lucky if this tour doesn't make that deficit worse.
And I think the Wash. Times is right about the tour very possibly making things worse for him. In fact, I think it will.
How about you?
The entire editorial is here.
1 comments:
I grew up in "Appalachia" and I now live in North Carolina. I have grave doubts that John Edwards has the foggiest notion of what makes either one tick at the core level. He's about to get his butt kicked on this "fact-finding" tour.
He is a wealthy torts lawyer who made his money suing the people whose money he would like to now have for his campaign. We call that talking out of both sides of your mouth where I came from. So far, neither side of Edwards' mouth make any sense!
Go home and take care of your wife, John. That's your primary job. The country, and your family, will both be better off for it.
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