Choosing John Edwards

The candidate is “phony,” “disingenuous,” “unaccomplished,” “inexperienced.” His “maturity” is questioned by experts. He lacks “military and foreign policy experience.” He’s been accused of being “ambitious.” His campaign “lacks substance.”

The target of these terms is not George W. Bush in 2000 but – according to the Republican National Committee, operating at http://www.kerrypicksedwards.com – John Kerry’s new running mate, John Edwards.

Of course, the Republicans were ready to bash Edwards by the time Kerry rolled out his name. Edwards, the Republicans thunder, “voted against support for our troops.” (They mean that he voted against Bush’s blank-check $87 billion appropriation.) “EDWARDS PROFESSES TO BE SOUTHERN MODERATE, BUT VOTES LIKE NORTHEASTERN LIBERAL.” And if that’s not enough, Dennis Hopper – Dennis Hopper – hosted a fundraiser for Edwards last October.

“Out of the mainstream of America when it comes to the war on terror, the economy and values,” said Bush’s guru, Karl Rove, to the Associated Press. The “liberal” part features prominently on the RNC website. There, the Republicans are already screaming themselves hoarse. Kerry isn’t just liberal, he’s “Über-Liberal” – the German touch is nice, considering that the Republicans played their first Hitler card against Kerry a couple of weeks ago in a Web-commercial tactfully called “Coalition of the Wild-Eyed.” On the liberal index, the RNC now says, Kerry “outranks Walter Mondale,” just as “Left-Wing Edwards More Liberal Than Geraldine Ferraro.” Imagine!

The current Republican crescendo culminates in: “EDWARDS ISN’T JUST BEHOLDEN TO PERSONAL INJURY TRIAL LAWYERS, HE IS ONE HIMSELF.” This is the main theme that the former Republican senator from North Carolina, Lauch Faircloth, trundled out in 1998 when Edwards, a political novice but a brilliant fellow with a jury in front of him, ran against him. But maybe this isn’t such a clever tack after all.

If the Republicans replay this scenario, they just might outfox themselves. According to an excellent 2001 article by Joshua Green, Faircloth, who’d made his own fortune in hog farming and land deals, was buying the advice of Republican sage Frank Luntz, who had written this advice to Republicans running for office: “It’s almost impossible to go too far when it comes to demonizing lawyers. Make the lawyer your villain by contrasting him with the ‘little guy,’ the innocent hard-working American who he takes to the cleaners.”

“Luntz had it backwards,” Green went on. “Edwards hadn’t cleaned out Mom and Pop. He’d targeted corporations…and negligent hospitals that had injured small children, and he’d won the unanimous jury decisions state law requires. What’s more, he responded to Faircloth’s criticism by inviting the public to scrutinize his legal record. Faircloth’s campaign strategists considered making a commercial featuring a doctor whom Edwards had put out of business, but thought better of it when they realized Edwards would retaliate by putting forward the little girl who’d suffered at the doctor’s hands.”

As Green pointed out, there are two ways to control corporate malfeasance in America. One is to regulate by government action. The other is to go to court and fight for recompense for victims. Americans may not like lawyers – insert joke here – but let the lawyer tug at the heartstrings by telling you about the little girl whose intestines were sucked out by a malfunctioning swimming pool drain, so that for the rest of her life she must be hooked up to feeding tubes for 12 hours a night, and who was offered $100,000 in recompense, but in the end won $25 million in damages… Well, that happened. John Edwards, the lawyer in the case, will tell the story on any occasion. He’ll hurl it in the teeth of anyone who makes “tort reform” – lowering the ceiling of jury awards to the vicinity of the floor – the centerpiece of his platform. As, for example, George W. Bush did as governor of Texas. As George W. Bush would like to do on the national plane during a second term.

This week, Republicans, when caught on the record, of course want to be caught crowing at Kerry’s choice. “This is great for us,” said Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie of the Edwards selection. “We’ve got the first- and fourth-most liberal senators on the Democratic ticket.” They rushed forward with an ad featuring Sen. John McCain, whom they called “Kerry’s first choice.” (McCain’s people deny Kerry ever offered him the job, but for all we know, the denial may hinge on a lawyerly dispute over the exact nature of the word “offer.” McCain must be the most courted nonrunner in modern political history, having by some accounts rejected Bush’s overtures in 2000, thus making Cheney Bush’s second choice.)

Whether the Republicans are quite so cocky about Edwards in private is doubtful. Edwards showed in the Democratic primaries that he drew well from all sides of the party. Ralph Nader recommended him to Kerry. The centrist Democratic Leadership Council enthuses that Kerry and Edwards “both ran positive, New Democrat campaigns intent on championing the interests, defending the values, and helping solve the problems of the middle class and all who seek to join its ranks.” Edwards, whose voice soothes when he wishes to soothe and rings when he wishes to rouse his audience, did well in the primaries with white workers (known as “middle-class” in America’s evasive political discourse) who aren’t union members, but also with rural inhabitants – and the latter could be decisive in battleground states like Ohio, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. He looks too young to be old and he doesn’t threaten anyone. He’s an equal-opportunity heart-throb. With his resume, he’s the sort of crossover artist Americans like – Horatio Alger who never turned to Scrooge, silver-tongued orator who wasn’t born with it in his mouth.

Still, the Republicans surely hope that reporters fall for their labeling tack. A goodly number of reporters, after all, are prone to take their campaign clichés from the ready-to-wear racks. When it comes to characterization, it’s easiest to shop for labels on the cheap. The candidates often enough cooperate, strumming the same theme over and over in order to brand themselves. What’s disconcerting, though, is how easily the journalistic pack can do its own branding.

On 3 July, for example, ABC News called John Kerry a “Boston Brahmin.” They aren’t alone – over the past five years, Kerry has been yoked to that phrase 18 times on TV and radio. Total times Bush was called “plutocrat” or “crony capitalist” or the like: three times. By birth, Kerry does indeed qualify as a Brahmin. And George W. Bush of New Haven, Kennebunkport and Midland, grandson of an investment banker turned senator, son of a president, reformed drunk, business failure who somehow never lacked for investors – George W. Bush qualifies as what? A Southern drawl works as some kind of insulation.

Edwards will try to borrow some of that magic and make himself the plain-spoken, articulate but unfancy man-of-the-people, clear yet without dumbing himself down. Give him a chance to speak, and he’ll seize the opportunity to repeat, once more, the “Two Americas” speech that proved so incandescent in last winter’s primaries. If the Republicans keep after him for being a millionaire trial lawyer, they open the door for him to contrast the way he made his millions with the ways in which Bush and Cheney made theirs.

I wouldn’t bet that Edwards will lose that argument.