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Why Edwards Will Lose
Pretty much no question at this point that Edwards will not win the nomination. Unless the polls for super Tuesday are way off, he's going to get creamed in the delegate-rich states.
I first became interested in Edwards a good bit before the primary season got underway, because I came across his book, titled "Four Trials," which chronicles four different court cases in which he participated as an attorney. The first case is a rather moving account of a medical neglicence suit where his client was given an overdose of medication that turned him from a trying-to-recover alchoholic into a paraplegic, unable-to-talk, wheelchair-bound mess. At trial, his first big one as I recall, he tried the case well enough to elicit a $750k settlement offer from the doctor's insurance company. He was told by the judge that he was crazy if he didn't take it, because South Carolina juries never awarded money in these types of cases. Everyone else he knew thought he should take it. His client, a working-class guy, thought this was wonderful news and was happy to take it.
But something didn't sit with Edwards about this. He knew that $750k wasn't enough to care for this man for the rest of his life...not even close. He finally told his client all of this, and explained the risk he would be taking if he declined the settlement (high chance of no money at all). The client, who could only communicate by typing on a keyboard, finally told Edwards "I trust you"-- and now his life was in Edwards' hands. This, understandably, scared Edwards to death, and left him wondering how he, who no matter what would go on to the next case and keep living his life, could or should really have this much control over someone else's fate.
For those wondering what happened, the jury came back with a verdict of $2.x million--the largest at that time in any case in the state for that type of case. The story was well-told, and really kept me on the edge of my seat in the bookstore, and I quickly relayed the emotional narrative to my friends. We sat around and talked about Edwards, and how someone who shared their fears and interests like this might not be such a bad choice for President.
So what does any of this have to do with him losing the nomination? Well, Edwards wrote an opinion piece in the NY Times today that is a retelling of this story, with the theme that the country should "trust him," just as this client chose to. That people have put their trust in him before, and that they will soon, and that you should now.
There are two problems with the op-ed, and they are both indicative of larger problems for the Senator and his bid for the presidency.
First, the re-telling of this story is not very well done...he does not provide the same sort of suspense that I think even I did above (read the article and see what you think). And for someone who has depended so heavily on the retelling of a small number of stories, he needs to get better at it. Certainly I'm not the only one to notice that Edwards' stump speech is generally invariable, and that for those who hear it more than a couple times, it grows boring and worrisome. When he's at his best, his speech is reminiscent of Clinton--he becomes someone who knows what he's talking about, knows how you hear it, and thus knows how to talk to everyone about it. But different than Clinton, he isn't able to wax so eloquently on any and every topic that comes across his desk...he's limited to just a few.
Second, is that he hasn't given people enough reason to just trust him given his lack of experience. People can "just trust" people with vision, but for people without great vision, they need history--some evidence of where they might go and what they might do, based on where they've been and what they've done.
The second problem is compounded by the first of course. I was willing to toss his lack of experience to the wind after the first few stories and first few speeches, but no longer. Had he shown vision, or maybe even a different story (heck, I only read the first one in the book before returning it to the shelf--he could have just used the second in the book!) I might be more sympathetic.
When he loses tomorrow, he should drop out and do his best to join Kerry as the VP. He brings a strong character to the ticket, and has that most important of all skills for almost any job, but especially for politics--the ability to communicate. However, just as an utter lack of communication skills doesn't totally disqualify one to "win" the presidency (Bush is a great example), communication skills as one's primary substantive skill doesn't guarantee it.
Posted on March 1, 2004 09:01 PM
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