After a summer of fire-breathing rhetoric, John Edwards seems to be reverting to the cheerful character that Iowans loved in 2004, making it ever-harder to identify, immediately and mechanically, what he stands for. This is clearly not the case for most of his competitors from both parties. We just know that Mike Huckabee is Christian, Rudy Giuliani is Security, Hillary Clinton is Experience and Barack Obama is Change, because we've been told this so often and in so many different ways.
Being closely associated with a key word or a concept can work beautifully, as for Mike Huckabee who has taken over the Christian conservative wing of his party (it helps that he paints his main rival, Mitt Romney, as being a devil-worshipper). In other cases, it backfires, with Rudy Giuliani's supporters discovering that their law-and-order candidate's history is anything but lawful and orderly.
The challenge with Edwards is deeper than one of superficial marketing (although it's hard to see how an endorsement by Kevin Bacon and the depressingly uncreative "Main Street Express" can compete with Oprah Winfrey and the world's largest phone bank.) In many ways, this is unfortunate because there is a need in the Democratic primary for a clear, strong voice on poverty, trade, economic insecurity, employment and income disparity. Bringing these issues to the forefront was an uphill battle from the start when a strong majority of the US population does not like to think in terms of class and, when it does, considers itself middle or upper-middle class, or just a couple of years away from being there, rather than a couple of years away from being jobless or homeless. Among those who do care, Edwards has simply not been able to convince them that he is the one who can solve these problems, failing to be credible in the role of working-class hero he has most recently assigned to himself.
It is hard to be a champion of outsiders and a slayer of the powerful when you are a powerful, wealthy, white man, although Ted Kennedy, for one, has done so remarkably well. And of course, Democratic primary voters don't shy away from highly privileged white male candidates such as John Kerry or Al Gore.
More relevantly, Edwards has been inconsistent, both in his positions and in his behavior. In 2004, he ran as a sunny, ambitious, optimistic son of the South. For much of 2007, he has turned into a harsh and uncompromising class warrior. Both are acceptable campaigning temperaments, but one shouldn't be surprised by voters' discomfort with this radical change in a heretofore pleasantly familiar politician.
On Edwards' actual positions, the metamorphosis has also been remarkable, and damaging. His tenure in public office, as short as it was, produced a record of votes and stances, a number of which he has renounced. Nearly all politicians evolve, for whatever reason, and voters can often understand, forgive and forget such conversions. But in the case of Edwards, how many "mistakes," as he has openly called a number of his previous decisions, can he expect us to move beyond? We can appreciate the honesty (or the opportunism) that leads to this confession of errors, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't hold their author accountable for them, especially when their impact has created so much misery.
It is a great leap of faith to ask voters to ignore a candidate's actual record in favor of fuzzy, or even precise promises on free trade, health care, poverty, civil rights, etc. It is far easier for Obama, whose record at the federal level is even thinner than Edwards', and who has generally not changed his positions, to play the vague card. In many ways, it is also easier for Clinton, since she has methodically played both sides of most issues.
Edwards' biggest mistake is, of course, on Iraq. The consequences of his vote in favor of war continue to wreak havoc, not only on US forces and Iraqis, but in the hundreds of billions that have been misspent, and could certainly have helped to alleviate some of the very ills Edwards now decries, had he not written George W. Bush a blank check.
His vote for the war resolution, for reasons that even a trial lawyer of his caliber can't coherently explain, will remain the darkest stain on his record (as it will for Clinton, Chris Dodd and Joe Biden, among others). But on other issues too, Edwards' transformation has been unsettling, especially in light of the strong vocabulary he uses to repudiate those who disagree with his current views.
Edwards is quick to denounce the evils of free trade and of NAFTA in particular (on which he didn't get to vote), perhaps forgetting, or hoping that voters will forget, his more flexible attitude towards trade with China, a far bigger threat to US jobs, or towards giving Bush "fast-track" authority.
Edwards says he feels "strongly" about the Patriot Act and its impact on the Bill of Rights. Why did he not feel this strongly when he voted in favor of it? It's hard not to see fear in that decision, fear that a vote against it would make him look weak on security, either to his North Carolina constituency or, worse, to a national audience. Of course, he was hardly alone in this vote, as only Russ Feingold voted "nay."
Whatever prompted this caution earlier in the decade, and whatever prompts Edwards' newfound boldness, is probably irrelevant. But it should certainly be no mystery why national voters, who have known him for just about four years, are wary. And why he better hope that his Iowa fans are able to stretch their imagination far enough to take him at his current word.