Ravenous Radical in Sheep’s Clothing

By Aditya A. Sivaraman | Sunday, February 11, 2007

Former Senator John Edwards spoke on Wednesday, January 31 at the Hopkins Center to a crowd of Dartmouth students and locals. The event had a town hall feel to it, with Edwards meeting the press, giving a short speech on his policy objectives and views, and reserving a good chunk of time for a question and answer session.

Edwards, who originally supported the Iraq war but then turned around to criticize sharply the Bush Administration for the war he wanted, spoke at length about the immediate necessity for change in Iraq and at home. The senator attempted to sound apolitical about war by stating that America’s position on Iraq “should not be driven by politics.” Though this sounded extraordinarily odd from a politician who flip-flopped on the same war based on which way the political wind blew, the senator preempted any criticism of his past actions by stating that he had “evolved,” presumably from a lesser primate, into his current status as a Homo sapiens war protester. Despite his trying to frame himself as a moderate, his position on Iraq is nothing short of radical: Edwards stated that he wants an immediate pullout of 40 to 50 thousand troops from Iraq, followed by a complete pullout within nine months. The senator explained that his post-pullout contingency plan would involve an intensified training process for Iraqi military and security forces, a power shift to Al-Maliki and the Shiite government, and, most alarmingly, an effort to restart diplomatic dialogues with Iran and Syria.

The senator’s grand strategy was a little bit easier to stomach. In a refreshing move from an otherwise run-of-the-mill liberal, the senator was unequivocal in his support for American hegemony and continued primacy. He clearly expressed his belief that America is the “natural leader” of the world. A world without American hegemony, according to Edwards, would devolve into an apolar world without leadership or stability. Without American dominance, the world would become dark and Hobbesian, where conflict and instability would prevail. The senator hopes to use a resurgence in American leadership to solve the crises in Iran and North Korea. In a surprising move, Edwards even suggested that he might have interest in rekindling the Cold War against our lately red nemesis: he suggested that an increase in American leadership might be brought to bear upon the two-faced Putin and his increasingly authoritarian ways.

Edwards’ domestic policy was pretty standard for a Democratic candidate. His biggest point was his vision of an America in which the rich-poor gap was reduced. The senator proposed raising the minimum wage, redistributing wealth (presumably through taxes on the robber barons), increasing employment, redesigning the tax code for the middle- and lower classes, and making it possible for lower-income students to attend college. Edwards also planned on reigning in the predatory lending industry by coming down on it with a socialist fist and eliminating the market for short-term loans by encouraging saving. His plan calls for a system in which the government would match 100 percent of the savings amassed by low-income families. He also called for initiatives that would end the geographic congregation of people of various income classes. His reasoning was the wealthy people don’t want lower-income people living with them, and that poor people don’t know any better. He added immediately afterwards that this is causing a racial problem in American communities. A careful analysis of the last few sentences proves shocking: not only does Edwards take a very patronizing view towards the poor, but he also conflates race and poverty. In the world of John Edwards, only minorities are poor, and worse yet, they don’t even know what’s good for them. Luckily for them, at least one Democrat does.

Edwards, like any Democrat who desires a successful presidential run, made explicit his support for universal health care. An audience member questioned him on this point. Considering both the size and effectiveness of America’s medical and pharmaceutical industries, would the senator be in favor of allowing government interference in one of the largest industries in the domestic economy? The only response was that, though Edwards apparently already has a clear health care plan, he won’t be articulating it until some time in the “near future.”

Edwards took a relatively moderate stance on illegal immigration. He favors fines for the immigrant criminals but also supports a path to citizenship for the millions of people who have already established lives in the United States. The process would require that the aliens learn English, not for cultural reasons, but because it is the “language of commerce” in America.

Finally, Edwards addressed the dominant social question of the current political atmosphere. Given the opportunity to take a courageous and progressive position on gay marriage, Edwards revealed his true colors as a populist: having already taken every opportunity to reference his religious heritage as a Southern Baptist, he hid behind his faith and claimed that he was “personally conflicted” about the issue. He opposes marriage, but supports civil unions for homosexuals and anti-discrimination laws. He was unequivocal about his opposition to the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy of the military. His excuse for being indecisive about one of the most pressing social justice questions of our generation was that he believes that the issue will be resolved when the younger generation takes power anyway. As a truly skilled politician, he dodged all criticism by devaluing the issue.

Senator John Edwards is an extraordinarily charismatic man. His speaking style is both disarming and authoritative-sounding at once. The steady tone and tempo with which he comfortably addresses large crowds is simultaneously awe-inspiring and lucid. He has the ability to come across as genuine. When he speaks, he exudes an aura that suggests strength of character, honesty, and openness. He comes across as simultaneously idealistic and pragmatic. Edwards truly possesses the mouth of Saruman, able to lull the listener into comfort and security, and to make the average voter believe that he truly is the kind of leader who has both the right ideas and the capacity to actualize them. It takes a jolt of cold New Hampshire air along with a few moments of trudging through the muddy residue on the sidewalk for reality to set in. Here is the reality of the Edwards platform.

The knowledge and experience senator Edwards claims to have amassed during his “evolutionary” period of the past few years have not served him well. His plan for a post-occupation Iraq is desperate at best and craven or insane at worst. Edwards counter-intuitively argued that Iran and Syria have an interest in a stable Iraq. According to his argument, since both of those countries are primarily Shi’ite, an instable Iraq would not only cause a refugee crisis that could be destabilizing but might cause a civil war in which they would be up against the primarily Sunni nations of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. Though this argument has merit, it is far less probable than the alternative: as a minority group in the Middle East, the Shi’ite powers may feel that it is in their interest to carve out a sphere of influence in the war-torn Iraq. Iran has both the means as the local hegemon and the motive to leverage this status to create a puppet state in Iraq. It doesn’t help the senator’s argument that this is a historically plausible scenario: Syria was the longtime puppet master of its weaker neighbor Lebanon. Even if the senator is right, it doesn’t justify reopening diplomatic relations with either of the two states. Iran is openly pursuing nuclear technology and has reneged on diplomatic agreements concerning plutonium refinement and weapons sales to radical Islamist groups: Syria is the primary supporter of Hezbollah. Both countries are terrorist states that have expressed a desire to destroy a longtime American ally and homeland of one of the most persecuted peoples in the history of Western civilization: Israel.

The senator’s domestic economic policy is inherently contradictory and serves as further proof that Edwards doesn’t have any real idea of what he wants to do in office. In almost the same breath, he advocated raising the minimum wage and reducing unemployment. Even a high school economics student could correctly point out that the good senator is either deluded or is simply lying about one or both of those desires. He is neither a scholar or not a gentleman; it is our belief that he is neither.

His wealth redistribution plan was never fully fleshed out, but history is a pretty good guide as to what form this will probably ultimately take: higher taxes on the most oppressed and productive part of American society (the aristocracy) and handouts for lower-income classes that do nothing to address the greater problem of cyclical poverty. There are, of course, valid arguments for why this kind of maneuver may be actually be good. Increasing the lot of the lowest economic classes in the country may serve to develop social infrastructures and create an expanded, more productive middle class. The problem with this argument, however, is that for Edwards’ plan to be actualized, the amount of redistribution that would be necessary would hit the upper classes (the ones that control the private sector and drive the economy forward) like a blunt-force object and severely cripple any existing market incentives for efficiency, productivity, and growth. Ultimately, the second argument effectively destroys the first: in a world in which the core economic incentives for growth are blunted, the American economy as a whole will either slow down or regress.

Historically, those who suffer worst in a regression are those whom Edwards is trying to help in the first place: the lower and middle classes. The senator, however, contests this point. Coming out as an opponent of outsourcing and globalization, Edwards argued that globalization only benefits the rich, that it widens the income gap, and makes the poor poorer. Once again, this is a patently false, though conveniently populist, belief. If Edwards’ protectionist policies are allowed to forcefully maintain American jobs that could be more efficiently done elsewhere in the status quo, over time, the drain these inefficiencies create on the American economy (and thus, the global economy) would be so tremendous that the national standard of living and economic power would drastically decrease. Especially in light of our trading partners retaliating with similar trade barriers, our very wealth that enables us the luxury of experimenting with protectionism would disappear. In the end, workers will get laid off anyway, but instead of having the domestic infrastructure to train these individuals to work in other industries, these people will find themselves out of luck in a world that no longer has need for their labor. Wealth redistribution and protectionism aren’t just policies that hurt the rich. The wealthier Americans will make losses but will ultimately survive; it is the poor who will be hit the hardest and will be least able to recuperate afterwards.

Even less likely to succeed (and more socialist) is his plan to create incentives for saving. He envisions a world in which the federal government would completely match the savings of lower income groups. Both the motives and the means for this plan are deeply flawed. First, his savings initiative is driven by his desire to drive short-term lending firms (which are regrettably referred to by the Left as “predatory lenders”) out of business. His defense of this blatantly militant and anti-capitalist maneuver is that the interest rates charged by these firms are “unfair.” This argument runs into the standard Leftist problem of ascribingarbitrary standards of fairness to a transaction entered into willingly by consensual adults. There is nothing unfair about short-term lending: the demographic of people who have an inelastic demand for short-term funds tends to overlap with the demographic that is most likely to default on its loans. The only way for an honest, hard-working lending firm to stay afloat is to hedge its risks by adjusting the interest rate it charges across the board accordingly. And, besides, calling upon the government to match, cent for cent, the savings of millions of people is vastly, if not prohibitively, expensive. Where is that money going to come from? Perhaps John Edwards can pay for part of it using the millions he amassed as an ambulance chaser.

Edwards most troubling domestic policy stand, however, is his shortsighted plan to end class and race discrimination in America. His first mistake is that he conflates the two: immediately after lauding the benefits of the integration of lower-income and upper-class communities, he echoes the desire almost identically, with the exception that he replaced the references to class with those of race. The inaccuracy and danger of this belief is self-evident; far more terrifying, however, is his statement that the reason the poor congregate together in low-income communities and eschew college educations is because they don’t know any better. This belief is both offensive and appalling. Does the senator believe the poor are stupid, and thus need a firm guiding hand to tell them what they truly want? Worse yet, this statement revealed the paternalistic nature of the senator’s governing philosophy. If he is willing to behave so callously to the very constituency he is counting on to bring him to office, what vile designs does he have for the rest of us?

The slogan of the Edwards campaign seems to be “transformational change” instead of “incremental change”. Don’t be fooled by the rhetoric. “Transformational” is just a euphemism for “radical”; the senator has effectively set himself up in intellectual opposition to such gentlemen as Edmund Burke, Ronald Reagan, and even Bill Clinton. His radicalism, though, is only second in line in the list of his distasteful ideological inclinations: worst of all, he seems not to have changed much from his days of being an ambulance-chasing opportunist. Edwards is best characterized as a populist, willing to blow in the political winds and take on whatever policy position, no matter how counter-productive, to appeal to the masses. His unpredictability makes him dangerous, and puts him in lock-step with another president whose lack of a cohesive campaign platform quickly degenerated into a ruinous reign in office: George W. Bush. It has been said that in America, the Democrats appeal to the poor and the enlightened, whereas the Republicans speak for the rich and the pragmatic. Edwards’ brand of populism is the scum of American politics. Unable to capture either of the classical political constituencies, he panders to the worst combination of the American voting bloc: the poor and the stupid. Like many power-mongering radicals before him, he has found the one group of people both desperate and deluded enough to gamble on him. Senator John Edwards is wrong on foreign policy, wrong on domestic policy, and wrong for America.

Ravenous Radical in Sheep’s Clothing

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