Cup of Cha
This is China

I remember thinking to myself in 2004 that if John Kerry picked Dick Gephardt to be his running mate it would be another in a series of uninspired moves. Kerry was always my choice to be president, long before he emerged in Iowa, but he had a knack for making baffling choices. Like voting for the Iraq war when he must have known what a dumb idea it was.

In terms of a running mate, John Edwards was such an easy choice, with his good looks, southern accent, and populist appeal. However, it appeared so obvious Kerry would choose the dull Missouri Senator, Dick Gephardt, that the NY Post actually ran a headline claiming it was a done deal. I have a friend who worked there at the time and recalled thinking to himself that any mistake he made going forward would pale in comparison.  I digress.

The point is that Kerry surprised everyone, picked Edwards, and lost in the closest election where the ‘winner’ actually got the most votes. As it turned out, Kerry’s instinct to pick Gephardt was right. It’s not like I don’t come up with tons of poor analysis and predictions, but my misreading of this situation has always baffled me. What state wouldn’t Kerry have won with Dick instead of Edwards? And how much better would the race have been with a couple of Dicks running for the White House? I mean on different tickets.

In the end Edwards was a totally uninspired choice, even if I failed to see it at the time. Kerry never got along with him, and as today’s excellent New York Times article points out, the North Carolina Senator always had himself in mind. From day one he was angling for his next run, going so far as to refuse to change his catch phrase from ‘Hope is on the way’ to ‘Help is on the way’ because “it sounded goofy.” Hello, it’s the same stupid slogan!

The real sad part about Edwards is that he seems not have a soul or purpose. He is running as the nominally top-tier candidate ‘most against the war.’ There’s a bit of a problem: he didn’t just vote for the war, he co-sponsored the legislation that Joe Lieberman wrote. So if you’re counting at home, the last two Democratic VP nominees played critical roles in taking America into an asinine war.

If you think that Edwards’ vigilance for and against the war is confusing, this is from the Times  article:

For his part, aides said, Mr. Edwards felt frustrated by Mr. Kerry’s public agonizing over the war in Iraq and a campaign that seemed to change consultants and message constantly. To Mr. Edwards, Mr. Kerry seemed unable to get out of his own way…

…Having seen up close the perils of seeming to shift with the wind, he is selling himself as the candidate of “conviction” and “bold ideas” and trying to portray the front-runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as tacking for political gain. Once the sunny centrist who did not want to criticize his rivals by name, Mr. Edwards has become the most confrontational candidate in the race. And he has courted his party’s left wing by renouncing his vote on the war, something he counseled Mr. Kerry not to do.

John Edwards is a man who picks a position (of integrity) and sticks with it, come hell or high water. Until the next election when he flips 180. This is a guy who wouldn’t know integrity if it showed up in his law offices with a neck brace on (actually that might be the only time he would recognize it). He is a man who sold the Iraq War when it was convenient, and rails against it when it is not. He takes the high road when it’s easy, but avoids it when he’s behind in the polls.

Now that Joe Lieberman has been banished from the Democratic Party, and rightly so, Edwards is the biggest scourge left. At least when Hillary takes a phony position she never bothers to put much conviction into it.

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