A fitting image
This is a few days late, and I’m sure other have made a similar observation, but I found it appropriate that John Edwards launched his campaign for president with a shovel in his hands. What bothers me about Edwards is not his positions on the issues (though I disagree with most), his inexperience or even his hair, it’s the ease with which he says things like this,
As a young trial attorney in 1985, about a dead baby,
“She speaks to you through me,” the lawyer went on in his closing argument. “And I have to tell you right now â?? I didn’t plan to talk about this â?? right now I feel her. I feel her presence. She’s inside me, and she’s talking to you.”
The jury came back with a $6.5 million verdict in the cerebral palsy case, and Mr. Edwards established his reputation as the state’s most feared plaintiff’s lawyer.
And as a young politician in 2004, Edwards infamously told a Kerry-Edwards rally in Newton, Iowa,
“If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.”
Charles Krauthammer, himself confined to a wheelchair, had this to say,
In my 25 years in Washington, I have never seen a more loathsome display of demagoguery. Hope is good. False hope is bad. Deliberately, for personal gain, raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable. Where does one begin to deconstruct this outrage?
I have a hard time taking John Edwards seriously as a candidate. That is not to say he isn’t a serious candidate, just that I can’t get past his reliance on utter BS.
December 31, 2006 11:45 am 
I think Edwards is great but I just don’t know what has changed since 2004 except that he is two years older. The more I think about the Dems in 2008, the more I think the nomination is Al Gore’s to lose: he was robbed in 2000, has been consistently right on Iraq (unlike Hillary), and will not have a problem with either cash or name recognition… I wrote a story on this at http://www.minor-ripper.blogspot.com
What do know? A reasonable Lefty who doesn’t have to use hate speech to get his point across! How absolutely refreshing.
On the other hand, I agree with you, Kevin. Since I am a Conservative, I don’t even like most of the Republicans they’re putting out there! God help us.
I thought the most interesting aspect is that he made his announcement first by having it leaked onto YouTube — apparently filmed and distributed by the Rocketboom.com folks, who got a first-shot interview directly thereafter– not much of an interview content-wise, but it says interesting things about what media matter most to candidates who are on the ball.
It’s all about the message presaentation with this guy. Shrewd and crafty — but at the end of the day, people will see him as what he is — a performer, putting on an act, but ultimately unbelievable.