Edwards Plays Bryan at the Hop
Sunday, November 18, 2007
By Christine S. Tian
Regardless of whatever doubts might be raised about John Edwards’s experience, sincerity, or notoriously expensive haircuts, the least that can be said about the presidential candidate, who held a Town Hall meeting with about 400 students and community members on Monday, is this: the man can put on a great show. In recognition of Veteran’s Day, Captain Drew Sloane, a young veteran who has served in Afghanistan and Iraq, did the honors of introducing the candidate, after which the lights dimmed, College Dems bustled around securing a clear walkway, and heavy metal guitar riffs began to blare out of the Top of the Hop’s speakers: hold on to your seats, the special effects seemed to make clear, because a major political rock star is coming through.
John Edwards walked into the center of the makeshift stage as if he had already won the election, flashing his trademark million-dollar smile, shaking hands, earnestly learning names, and all but kissing babies and curing scrofula. Within a few minutes, he was loudly denouncing lobbyists, CEOs, and pretty much every misstep of the federal government since 1980. There’s no denying that Edwards is one of the most rhetorically capable candidates in this election cycle; he transforms platitudes and political buzzwords into impressive-sounding, emotion-stirring tirades with remarkable ease. He punctuated this list of grievances with the occasional catchy slogan, such as “It’s time to tell the truth!” or “We shall rise up and we shall fight!” At times, the onslaught of such proclamations threatened to spill into the absurd; at times, I half-expected the speech to turn into a group rendition of “We Shall Overcome.” (The woman seated next to me certainly seemed disappointed that this was not the case, but she made up for it by bobbing her head vigorously at every sentence, responding to his pauses with “amen” and “yes, sir!” and answering his rhetorical questions.) Edwards’ proposed policy solutions to these noble-sounding problems with America, however, are far more questionable than his oratorical skills.
During the course of the hour-long discussion, Edwards touched on all the major issues that define his political campaign: he promised universal health care, more governmental assistance for secondary education, complete withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq, and federal assistance for low-income housing; he criticized drug and insurance companies, free-trade agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA, Bush’s tax cuts, and anything and everything “corporate” and “corrupt” (i.e. the whole of Washington, if Edwards is to be believed). Edwards invoked his humble beginnings as the son of a mill worker, described his recent trip to help rebuild New Orleans, and related the same story he shared during his last appearance at Dartmouth: James Lowe, a coal miner born with a severe cleft palate that rendered him unable to speak, did not receive correctional surgery until he was in his 50s.
For anybody who has been even remotely in touch with the news, it was nothing new. Indeed, for anybody with the faintest grasp of political history, Edwards’s speech, his campaign strategy, and his political views are nothing new: he is merely the latest incarnation of an American fixture, the famous populist politician. If Edwards had been alive in the 1890’s, he’d be William Jennings Bryan, campaigning for free silver so farmers could pay back their debts at the cost of massive inflation for the rest of the country; if he’d been alive in the 1930’s, he’d be Huey Long, declaring “Every man a king” as justification for radically redistributing wealth. If John Edwards were a movie, he’d be Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, all feel-good declamation and shiny promises to shake up a corrupt world with the power of the common man.
Unlike many of the other Democrats who are more measured in terms of strategy and campaign message, Edwards embraces the “Mr. Smith” ethic wholeheartedly. Regardless of what educated Americans think about populism and its often disappointing results, he is unabashedly proud to be descended from the same ideological lineage as the Progressives of the late 19th and early 20th century, the lineage of Bryan and Long. It’s entirely impossible to criticize John Edwards’ campaign without examining the entire historical basis of the Populist movement. If you’re sympathetic to the populist cause, Edwards is your man; if you’re not, then, well, you obviously don’t care about poor people.
It’s not a bad campaign strategy, especially for someone with as much rabble-rousing rhetorical power as Edwards—after all, how can you criticize the story of James Lowe without coming off as a cynical charlatan? How can you defend free trade that has led to some degree of outsourcing without feeling guilty when hearing the repeated references Edwards makes to the jobless manufacturing workers whom he personally has encountered? By championing the cause of poverty relief and the “common man,” by filling his stump speeches with admittedly very touching stories, John Edwards has perfected the brilliant art of making it nearly impossible to criticize his campaign without looking morally inferior.
Which raises the question: why on earth is Edwards not more politically successful, especially among college students, than his constant third-place finishes in Democratic polls indicate? Americans in general are not all cold-hearted cynics who love seeing poor people trampled upon, and students have always been famous for their bleeding hearts. When answering a question, Edwards tried to blame the lack of radical mobilization for his own campaign on the cynicism of college students, but the endless proliferation of anti-poverty, anti-hunger, and anti-homelessness groups at Dartmouth and campuses nationwide, not to mention the ever-increasing amount of service trips that young people embark upon, seems to contradict his assertion that students are jaded with attempts to rehabilitate the war on poverty. In fact, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas Friedman recently applauded our generation for “quietly pursuing [our] idealism, at home and abroad” through service trips, military volunteering, and teaching programs. Could it be that disagreeing with Edwards’ solutions to America’s problems does not (gasp!) make you a horrible person who doesn’t care about the poor and wishes that James Lowe had never received dental surgery?
The problem with populism is not in its noble impulses to help the downtrodden, but in its frequently ineffective and shortsighted ideas for solving whatever crisis is in fashion to rant about (health care, governmental corruption, or, to run it back a century, the gold standard). The cracks in John Edwards’ policy plans began to show as he fielded questions from the audience in the last half of the town hall meeting. After hearing about his ambitious plans to spend the federal budget on universal health care, housing vouchers, college financial assistance, alternative fuel research, carbon emissions reduction, and just about everything under the sun, a student very cogently asked Edwards how these plans would affect the federal budget deficit. Edwards, instead of defending his plans as to the slightest degree fiscally sound (hint: they’re not), began to spin his wheels, telling the audience that his plans to raise the minimum wage, provide healthcare, and stop global warming would help the economy, thus improving our deficit. (Yes, apparently global warming—not under-taxing and overspending—is a major contributor to our federal budget deficit. Who knew?)
Additionally, Edwards’ attacks on anything and everything “corporate,” while they certainly sounded inspiring, make little sense when considered in real terms. Hillary Clinton, he informed us, is a “corporate Democrat” for taking campaign contributions from federal lobbyists who can’t be expected to effect any real change in Washington. Reasons underlying unemployment and low wages for many American workers don’t have to do with American competitiveness in the world market or the efficiency of businesses, but rather with “corporate CEOs” who rake in the cash while steering their companies into the rocks. And, you guessed it, NAFTA and CAFTA, although they have drastically improved our trade flows with neighboring countries, were terrible treaties to enter because they only benefited multinational corporations. At the beginning of this term, a heated argument with a liberal friend regarding corporate recruiting ended with our agreement that “it is possible to work for Goldman Sachs and not actually be Satan”--apparently even this compromise is too much for the Edwards camp.
Obviously, even John Edwards doesn’t believe the world would be better off if all large corporations simply disappeared off the face of the planet, but what he plans to do to take down corporate America without actually destroying our economic infrastructure remains unclear. The only thing that is clear about his position is that if the American people received a dollar for every time Edwards has used the terms “corporate” or “corrupt” on the campaign trail, we might be a lot closer to financing his universal health care plan.
The moralizing side of populism is eminently evident in Edwards--of all the Democrats who refuse to recognize gay marriage as legitimate, I’m the least surprised at his opposition, couched in terms of his “family values” in an attempt to appeal to voters from similar backgrounds as him. Logical (but not ideological) contradictions in the name of championing the middle class and the common man abound. John Edwards wants to reduce unemployment by drastically raising the minimum wage; he wants to cut the federal budget deficit by spending billions on health care. He calls for severe carbon emissions standards (intended to be lowered every year) to be imposed upon businesses, but also has dedicated himself to increasing the number of manufacturing jobs in America. All of these demands do reflect the driving goal of his campaign strategy, but their counteracting effects after implementation leave something to be desired.
Unlike John Kerry, the hapless Democratic nominee of 2004, John Edwards’ problem is not flip-flopping. From his stump-speech rhetoric to his policy outlook to his endlessly recycled litany of stories about “common folks” ignored by the government, Edwards has been running one of the most consistent campaigns of the Democratic Party. It’s hard to argue with the noble-sounding intentions and seeming sincerity of Edwards’ campaign, but most Americans seem to have the common sense and historical perspective necessary to realize that populist politics don’t offer the only solution—that oftentimes, they don’t offer any solution. With more stumping, more photo ops, and a whole lot of luck, this election year’s Mr. Smith may end up going to Washington—but it’s doubtful that he’ll accomplish anything substantive once he gets there. n
|
