John Edwards, good-looking as ever
Tell me something, Democrats: Knowing what you know now about the presidential campaign — which is to say, after watching your two top candidates flay the flesh from each other in an endless season of trench warfare — do you ever look back and wonder if John Edwards wouldn’t have been the best bet after all?
Reconsidered in the light of the past few months, Edwards looks pretty good. The wave of mortgage foreclosures that has caused homeowners to see the equity in their homes melt away like an Eskimo Pie in August would have provided much demagogic fodder for a populist candidate like Edwards. Also, he’s too smart to invent tales of personal heroism a la Hillary Clinton, and too much the jury-charming lawyer to be as verbally clumsy as Barack Obama was when talking about those gun-and-God loving, bitter Pennsylvanians.
The Democratic primary season doesn’t appear to be headed for a happy ending. With every passing day it becomes more certain that neither Clinton nor Obama will arrive in Denver for the convention with enough delegates to claim the nomination. The situation could not be more diabolically engineered for maximum trauma: Obama has more popular support, but he hasn’t won the big states; Clinton claimed the states rich with electoral votes, but she trails in the popular vote. How do you even figure out who to nominate? Worse, both are now revealed to have profound flaws as candidates. Clinton has an uncertain affection for the truth, while Obama’s effort to sweep away the politics of the past instead often seems like an effort to sweep away uncomfortable questions before they can be asked.
Edwards’ flaw? He’s a little too enthralled with his hair, a problem that seems almost quaint today, and certainly minor. As a deal-killer, that’s not nearly as deadly a problem as those that the other two candidates have put on display.
Democrats are assured of a place in history for giving a major-party nomination for the first time to a woman or an African-American, whichever the case may be. But it’s starting to feel like they’re trading victory for history.
April 25th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
I agree with your last sentence. Let’s hope so! A bitter, elitest lawyer or a vindictive, elitist lawyer. Some choice.
April 30th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Edwards the Candidate is like a neglected, back-up quarterback on a team with a floundering offense. The starter sucks! Isn’t there anybody on this team who knows how to play this game? How about that guy?
Sure he may look tempting, sitting on the end of the bench, with his legs crossed, flossing his teeth and checking out his hair in a hand mirror. But give him the ball and all his flaws and foibles (i.e. the stuff that made him third choice in a field of three to begin with) will be back in the 24-hour news cycle to remind us why he’s currently (and deservedly) insignificant.
He does have nice hair though. Hell, at $400 a trim, he should.