HE STRIDES into an Iowa primary school where more than a hundred people have skipped their lunch to hear him, wearing jeans and flashing a smile that could sell toothpaste. He begins, as always, by mentioning his wife, who was diagnosed with incurable cancer in March. “She’s doing great.” But within seconds, John Edwards dives into the details of his health-care scheme. Then on to questions. The subjects range from high medical costs to the influence of Iran. “Here’s what I think,” he answers, before launching into a detailed plan to fix the problem.
Mr Edwards is a man of big plans. No other presidential candidate, of either party, can match the sheer quantity, let alone the ambition, of his policy ideas. He has grand, progressive, goals””to end the war in Iraq (obviously), provide universal health care, address global warming, eliminate poverty in America within 30 years””and detailed blueprints of how to do it all.
All this is a big change from 2004, when he first ran, unsuccessfully, for the Democratic nomination and then (equally unsuccessfully) as John Kerry’s vice-presidential running-mate. Those campaigns were built around his youthful charm, made-for-politics biography (the son of a mill-worker in North Carolina; the first member of his family to go to college) and a rousing stump speech about “two Americas”, one for the rich and one for the rest.
Hmmm. Let’s see … That’d be 11 Trillion dollars in Democrat anti-poverty programs in the last 40 years, during which time the proportion of “poor” has barely changed.
And Mr. Edwards has to go to New Orleans to find enough poverty for the requisite photo-ops. Conveniently forgetting, of course, that New Orleans, and Louisiana have been run exclusively by, er, Democrats for the last 70 years.
If Democrat policies, programs, plans, and performance were any good at all … New Orleans would be their preferred example of Democrat results. Well, it’s a good example, anyway, which rather weakens Mr. Edward’s case, and somewhat seriously in the event.
I believe it was Einstein who said that (paraphrasing) repeated application of the same effort in the expectation of different results is the working definition of insanity.
Yes John there really are two Americas. One where rich politicians get $400.00 hair cuts, build 28,000 square foot homes and earn over $400,000.00 a year as a “consultant” while being ugly to thier less blessed neighbors. The other America is one where people go to work every day and grind out thier living with out “channeling” people with extreme cerebral palsy.
Did anyone else see the story from the Onion: “Jonathan Edwards vows to end all bad things by 2011”? Kind of reminds me of that.
What we need is federal funding to help citizens cope with the high cost of haircuts.
I can’t wait for his next rousing stump speech calling for free, Universal Hair Care!
This is what white-hot ambition looks like in a $3,000 suit and a $400 coiff.