Edwards didn't just start walking the talk

[mbali]

From December 2002 GQ:

"A black classmate of the senator's had told me about African-American protest for representation on the homecoming court . . . nother high schoool chum, Edwards's eventual college rommate, Bill Garner, had brought up the subject as well. The few blacks at North Moore High had staged a sit-in on the campus lawn, Garner told me. And, he said, Johnny Edwards had walked up to the group and spoken with them. Then he sat down with them.

"Edwards had not volunteered that detail . Perhaps he didn't remember it. Perhaps he deemed it puny in scope. This was not, after all, a lunch counter or the front of a bus. Only a stupid homecoming-court sit-in. A little thing. That's all there was to do. So he did it - spur of the moment, sitting down for the little guy."

[yaledem]

1. This is the reason I love Edwards.

This guy connects with both african-americans and southern whites at the same time. Quite a feat, IMO.

[FrenchieCat]

2. Now if he could only

get himself some foreign policy experience. And stop having to use Bush's General to give him advise on how to beat Wes Clark in South Carolina.

I'm Black, and I'm for Clark.
Edwards is a pretty nice guy, I'll give you that....but not enough Gravitas and Moxie.

[AP]

3. Whoa. That story really morphed.

Shelton prepped JRE for MTP. Clark was never even discussed on MTP. Now Shelton is giving advice on beating Clark in SC?

Also, I'm not looking for a President to order me around. I'm looking for one who knows what it's like to start with nothing and make something out of yourself.

The Civil War might have been fought by armies led by generals, but it was a lawyer who grew up poor in Illinois who led the country through that period in history.

[mbali]

4. Bam! n/t

[surfermaw]

5. Shelton is from North Carolina isn't he.

Didn't Bush send him home to North Carolina????Does that tell you anything...

[DemDogs]

6. He must have been 17 or 18 years old

So this has been his cause for over thirty years! I agree, he walks the walk, not just talk. Gotta love him.

[AP]

7. To be fair, this hasn't been his cause for over 30 years. If ....

... you read the whole article, you get the impression that Edwards's cause for over thirty years was to keep building up a platform on which he could help more an more people. When you start with nothing, the first person you have to build up is yourself. Once you take care of yourself, then you look after your family. After that, your neighbors, then your state, and then your country.

So the story that article tells is that JRE was very focussed on his own education, and then his career. As he got more opportunities to make a difference (ie, as he became more secure financially) he could broaden his horizons. First to charitable work, and then to politics. As he built up his political career, he broadened his focus from the senate to the presidency.

The tone of this article is that, with this single-minded focus, he may have missed some observations of things that went on arround him. The interviewer asked Edwards if he could remember anything about his youth that told a story about how he observed the black experience of America. He demures. The interviewer had to ask his friends if they remembered, and one friend definitely remembered something -- that story up there.

So, really, what this story tells is that Edwards is basically a good guy, always trying to do better and help more and more people, and even when he was looking after himself, he probably recognized the desires of others to achieve the same goals he had set for himself and he saw that helping them was the right thing...or something like that.

[DemDogs]

8. He didn't recognize his stand for equality as anything special

I read that to mean that that is what he is about - from 17 or 18 till now. Were there other "moments" in between? I don't know. From the article, I would guess he would say he didn't do anything special. But as someone from the South, I can tell you that it is those things like the football player sitting with protesters that have made the difference.

[AP]

9. Oh, yeah. I agree with that. I was just trying to distinguish Edwards from

people like Clinton or Carter.

Race, specifically, and not broader, more general themes, was Clinton's issue from a very early age.

It was BECAUSE of racism that Clinton wanted to get into politics. When Clinton was 18 or 19 he worked on a campaign. He went to a stump speech by the Republican opposing his candidate and listened to the guy say racist things. After the speech he couldn't help himself. He walked up to the guy and told the Republican that he made him ashamed to be a citizen of Arkansas. When Clinton was young he would get in his car and drive into the Mississippi Delta. He'd stop in small towns and talk to people about their lives.

Edwards doesn't have stories like that. He has a different kind of story. Perhaps one that someone 18 years younger than Clinton would have. In any event, it's a pretty good story.

[mbali]

10. Big Dog was in a class all by himself

Absolutely amazing, wasn't he?

[AP]

11. I wonder if the historical moment has passed that could produce

a president like Clinton, or if we'll have future presidents with experiences precisely like his.

And this raises a point that I like about Edwards. I like to look at the presidents as being born of a moment in history and then applying their historical understanding of America to policy making.

This is what angers me about Bush. His historical moment is the hegemony of inheritted privilege, cocaine parties, evading service because your dad's rich, failing your way to the top in an economy that was making everybody rich, especially in TX. Nothing he stands for says anythign good about America.

Now, you take Edwards. He came out of college and law school in the 70s into a crappy economy (partially caused by the oil industry, of which Bush's family was a part of -- it was making TX rich, and it was hurting the middle class). Edwards made his professional career in the 80s when greed was good, when he had to say to coporations that, you may be greedy, but you have to compensate the people you injure. And then he entered politics in the late 90s because he and his wife watched what the Republicans were doing to Democracy and to Clinton and looked at Lauch Faircloth and said "we have to take this guy out." Throughout that time, Edwards had to work hard while relying on good public infrastructures to give him decent opportunities (he went to public schools all his life, except fot the time at Clemson, and he worked in the courts).

Now that's a pretty good reflection of your times. And those are pretty good historical experiences to want to bring to bear on society.

I have a hard time figuring out what the other candidates' broad experiences are, and I have a hard time historicizing their identities. I love Clinton's -- his was perfect for America (race, single mom, class, education etc. -- absolutely outstanding). I really think Edwards has the best ones this year -- and in many ways it's the set of experiences that perfectly captures this historic moment.

[mbali]

12. Very, very interesting

great insights.

[AP]

13. I just heard an economist, Doug Henwood, talk about how the end of the...

golden economic era in the US was 1973. He said that the Democrats provided the best economy since the end of that era. He thinks the Democrats could have done a much better job. However, he's appalled by how bad the Republicans have intentionally made the economy since 2001.

I think, historically speaking, Edwards represents that era. He graduated from college into the worst economy in America in 25 years. There was NO margin for error in his life. He had to do everything exactly right, or he would have no future. Then 25 years later, he watched the Republicans try to sabotage the people who were trying to take America back to the golden age and he said that he had to take those people out. Historically, that's what he represents fighting for the middle class against the hegemony (whereas, historically, Clinton probably stood for the transition of the south from its legacy of racism to egalitarianism).

http://www.workingforchange.com/radio/index.cfm?CFID=1560664&CFTOKEN=2304f26224fc9dc6-D68C408A-A4DF-FF57-B4EEF6547990BFED&jsessionid=8e302675471068751405194

By the way, Henwood scoffs at the idea that Dean is a liberal.

[mbali]

14. A stark contrast to George W

Unlike wealthy, connected individuals like W, John Edwards and other "regular people" don't have any margin of error. They cannot shirk their way through school, squander opportunities, and behave like screw ups for the first 40 years of their lives and know that they can still do well in life. They have to work their asses off around the clock from start to finish.

[AP]

17. Yes. No time for the "acoholism" phase of life if they expect to be

president.

Acting like an ass and still succeeding is only an option for people like Bush.

[leyton]

16. I'll bet there will be another.

I'll bet that people used to say that there would never be another president like Lincoln. But we still come up with a truly great president every now and then - like FDR and like Clinton. They're rare, but I'll bet there will be more.

[AP]

18. I KNOW there will be more great presidents.

I was just talking about the historical moment.

Bill Clinton said that he LOVED to go to movies when he was young, and he still does. He said that until he was 18 (I think) he never sat next to a black person in the movie theater. Black people sat up in the balcony.

He said that, growing up, he never swam in the same public pool as a black person.

I don't know how many more presidents (if any) will have experiences like that.

I'm grateful that we won't. But I worry that without presidents who have had experiences like that, we get people who lose sight of the prize.

[blm]

15. Edwards was UNFAIRLY labeled "Bushlite" by Dean early on, and many of

his supporters picked it up and smeared Edwards and other great Democrats who have LONGER records of standing up for Democratic issues than the former Librtarian centrist, newly anointed populist Dean.

Go figure how anyone believes someone who had to change his positions after he started running.

[DemDogs]

19. Exactly right

and thanks for saying it.