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Edwards' EmotionalismThe candidate and his family in New Hampshire.
By John DickersonPosted Tuesday, April 3, 2007, at 4:48 PM ET
CONCORD, N.H.—John Edwards is the anti-Obama. The Illinois senator's stump speeches are studded with anecdotes and set-piece jokes and have a changing rhythm he has compared to a jazz performance. When he offers policy specifics, they feel secondary. Edwards finished speaking Monday in the Concord High gymnasium without offering anecdotes or jokes—the rhetoric didn't soar much above the fiberglass backboards. He punctuated his stream of policy talk on global warming, Iraq, education, poverty, and health care with the Edwards C: the shape he makes with his thumb and first finger when citing a fact or policy detail.
Later, at a tour of Stonyfield farms, Edwards made the distinction with Obama clearer. He called on Congress to stand up to the president even if Bush vetoes a date for withdrawal of American troops—a conscious effort to distinguish himself as more anti-war than Obama, who said Sunday that Congress should pass the war-funding money without a timeline for withdrawal if Bush vetoed the spending bill. He then made a broader swipe. "I hope you will put a really rigorous test to [the presidential candidates]. I don't know about you, but I'm tired of the rhetoric. It's not enough to talk about 'hope' and 'we're all going to feel good.' We're past that. This is a very serious time in American history. It's time for anybody running for president to treat this seriously. I have talked about hope and inspiration in the past, and they're wonderful things, but you have to translate them into action." The only way it could have been clearer that he was talking about Obama would have been for him to hold up the Illinois senator's book jacket and point to it.
Edwards is not just trying to be the policy candidate, but the macho policy candidate, boasting and taunting his opponents to match his level of specificity. His wife reinforced the message. "I'm confident about his ideas, so grill the business out of him," she said, introducing him.
Candidates recount dramatic anecdotes or tell jokes to draw audiences in to specific policies or convey personal, appealing qualities. Emotion leads to persuasion which leads to commitment. Edwards' pitch Monday—a mix of economic populism and international idealism—had feeling: He called on the audience to pitch in to restore America's position as a force for good in the world. But he left aside the normal stagecraft and swelling language politicians usually employ to connect with their audiences.
At the moment, Edwards doesn't need emotional rhetoric. It is swirling around him in Concord, as it will continue to now that his wife had been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Monday was the first time that the whole Edwards family campaigned together. The Edwards' young son and daughter were off for spring break, and their older daughter was up from Harvard, where she is studying law.
Elizabeth Edwards' illness was not mentioned in the half-day I spent with her husband, but the family tableau kept forcing me to account for it. Edwards has asked us to look at him in the center of an emotional swarm and judge how he handles himself as a way of testing how he would handle the pressure of the presidency. He is asking us to imagine what he's going through and admire his commitment in the face of it. The presence of his children brings this into high relief. During the address at Stonyfield, the young Edwards boy draped over his mother like a shawl and kissed her before his minders whisked him away. It seemed normal. It also seemed maudlin.
No one in the Edwards campaign looks morose or somber, especially Elizabeth. She showed perfect pitch introducing her husband, standing to expand on an answer to a voter's question about veteran's health benefits, and reminding her husband about a policy fact. She even collected a little cash on a day that the Edwards campaign celebrated raising $14 million in the first quarter. During a plant tour to see how Stonyfield yogurt is made, a 25-year-old quality-control worker named Marin Lacoste stopped the candidate and his wife. Standing in her white lab coat, safety goggles, and hard hat, she handed over a $100 check with slightly shaky hands to Elizabeth Edwards.
Edwards' Emotionalism:The candidate and his family in New Hampshire.
John Dickerson is Slate's chief political correspondent and author ofOn Her Trail. He can be reached at .
Photograph of John Edwards by Alex Wong/Getty Images. Photograph of John Edwards on Slate's home page by Yuri Gripas/UPI Photo.
COMMENTS
Remarks from the Fray:
Reading the account of John Edwards' emotionalism/anti-Obama/Policy-Heavy-Real-Serious-Stuff campaign tour of New Hampshire I'm struck by a few things.
The first is the sudden acceptance of the Newtism that Obama is the "therapy candidate," a pretty face that makes us feel good about ourselves, but without substance. "Jazz" "jokes" and "hope" with policy issues that feel secondary. I thought the national press had learned the lesson about establishing memes this early in a political cycle. "Obama" is all flash and no substance is going to be the new "John Kerry looks French" which was the new "Al Gore takes credit for the internet."
Secondly, I'm not sure if the sudden change in Edwards is cold-eyed triangulation, or growth as a politician but I worked for Edwards way back in his Senate race and everyone, EVERYONE, who heard him stump likened his style to "jazz." He had a few good anecdotes and set-piece jokes that had a changing rhythm and he would riff off of them to suit whichever group he was speaking to. It was impressive and it worked in small groups. He didn't have the ability to make it would when there wasn't a live audience to feed off of (can't blame the man, he's a successful attorney because he could read a jury). Maybe this isn't so much "I'm not OBAMA!" as developing a new style that suits the current political dynamics.
Finally, I find it a bit ironic that Dickerson is criticizing [Edwards] for "policy issues that feel secondary" in an article that's all horse race and no substance. Maybe Edwards has looked at what the last several years has done to this country and what his wife's health issues have meant to him and reexamined why he wants to run, and what kind of president he'll be if he gets elected. Maybe his policies have changed because of this. But I wouldn't know it from this article, which aside from a few links to Edwards' campaign page has a complete lack of policy points. All we get is "Macho" John Edwards and "Jazz Hands" Obama.
I like John Edwards. I was prepared to support John Edwards. His positions on a lot of issues mirror my own, and after Dubya it would be nice to have a President who was both smart and articulate.
But I confess the news of his wife's cancer has made me rethink my vote. Edwards is right that the stakes are high, and that whoever is President after Bush is going to be inheriting an awful mess. The notion that a President of the United States might also be spending his term caring for a terminally ill spouse strikes me as a bad combination.
Having a First Lady die in the White House is not unprecedented---Letitia Tyler, Caroline Harrison and Ellen Wilson all passed away during their husbands' Presidencies, from illnesses other than cancer. Wilson and Tyler even remarried during their terms in office, although a courtship and wedding would seem to be yet another distraction to running the Executive Branch (perhaps it was a coincidence, but both of the second wives proved to be exceptionally dominating First Ladies. Tyler's second wife Julia wanted to be treated like the Queen, and inaugurated the tradition that a band play "Hail to the Chief" at Presidential functions. Wilson's second wife, Edith, actually became something of the de facto President after her husband's stroke). It's hard to judge what effect the death of the First Lady had on their husband's administrations though. Tyler and Harrison are generally seen as mediocre executives, while Wilson tends to get high marks from historians.
Moreover, looking back on presidential marriages, one can see that marital bliss is not a prerequisite for a Chief Executive. Our greatest Presidents---Washington, Lincoln and FDR---all had marriages that ranged from the cool to the troubled---while some of our weakest Presidents, like John Adams, Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter had rock solid unions with their wives.
Nevertheless, it's one thing for a marriage to be less than perfect, but it's another thing to have a First Lady dying of cancer. Everyone who has had experience with cancer knows how traumatic the ordeal can be to patients and family alike. If Edwards is the caring individual that he makes himself out to be, there's no way he will be able to devote his full energy to running the country while his wife struggles with a devastating illness. And if Edwards is the sort of person who can ignore his spouse's suffering to focus 100% on his job, then he's not the sort of person I want in the Oval Office either.
Unless, of course, the alternative is a Republican.
It is just fine for him to set himself up as the "anti-Obama" and to tell Congress how to vote. But the fact is that he is NOT part of that vote and not part of Congress and no matter how he says what should be done, he is in no better position to say it than you are or than I am. He is nobody.
What Obama has going for him that Edwards does not is that Obama is actually a part of the process. Whatever Edwards' opinion is, is just wind.
I give Edwards an A for valiant effort. But when I imagine my President standing against seasoned, maybe even evil world leaders, I do not see Edwards there doing that job.
CONCORD, N.H.—John Edwards is the anti-Obama. The Illinois senator's stump speeches are studded with anecdotes and set-piece jokes and have a changing rhythm he has compared to a jazz performance. When he offers policy specifics, they feel secondary. Edwards finished speaking Monday in the Concord High gymnasium without offering anecdotes or jokes—the rhetoric didn't soar much above the fiberglass backboards. He punctuated his stream of policy talk on global warming, Iraq, education, poverty, and health care with the Edwards C: the shape he makes with his thumb and first finger when citing a fact or policy detail. 
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Remarks from the Fray:
Reading the account of John Edwards' emotionalism/anti-Obama/Policy-Heavy-Real-Serious-Stuff campaign tour of New Hampshire I'm struck by a few things.
The first is the sudden acceptance of the Newtism that Obama is the "therapy candidate," a pretty face that makes us feel good about ourselves, but without substance. "Jazz" "jokes" and "hope" with policy issues that feel secondary. I thought the national press had learned the lesson about establishing memes this early in a political cycle. "Obama" is all flash and no substance is going to be the new "John Kerry looks French" which was the new "Al Gore takes credit for the internet."
Secondly, I'm not sure if the sudden change in Edwards is cold-eyed triangulation, or growth as a politician but I worked for Edwards way back in his Senate race and everyone, EVERYONE, who heard him stump likened his style to "jazz." He had a few good anecdotes and set-piece jokes that had a changing rhythm and he would riff off of them to suit whichever group he was speaking to. It was impressive and it worked in small groups. He didn't have the ability to make it would when there wasn't a live audience to feed off of (can't blame the man, he's a successful attorney because he could read a jury). Maybe this isn't so much "I'm not OBAMA!" as developing a new style that suits the current political dynamics.
Finally, I find it a bit ironic that Dickerson is criticizing [Edwards] for "policy issues that feel secondary" in an article that's all horse race and no substance. Maybe Edwards has looked at what the last several years has done to this country and what his wife's health issues have meant to him and reexamined why he wants to run, and what kind of president he'll be if he gets elected. Maybe his policies have changed because of this. But I wouldn't know it from this article, which aside from a few links to Edwards' campaign page has a complete lack of policy points. All we get is "Macho" John Edwards and "Jazz Hands" Obama.
--Learned_Hands
(To reply, click here.)
I like John Edwards. I was prepared to support John Edwards. His positions on a lot of issues mirror my own, and after Dubya it would be nice to have a President who was both smart and articulate.
But I confess the news of his wife's cancer has made me rethink my vote. Edwards is right that the stakes are high, and that whoever is President after Bush is going to be inheriting an awful mess. The notion that a President of the United States might also be spending his term caring for a terminally ill spouse strikes me as a bad combination.
Having a First Lady die in the White House is not unprecedented---Letitia Tyler, Caroline Harrison and Ellen Wilson all passed away during their husbands' Presidencies, from illnesses other than cancer. Wilson and Tyler even remarried during their terms in office, although a courtship and wedding would seem to be yet another distraction to running the Executive Branch (perhaps it was a coincidence, but both of the second wives proved to be exceptionally dominating First Ladies. Tyler's second wife Julia wanted to be treated like the Queen, and inaugurated the tradition that a band play "Hail to the Chief" at Presidential functions. Wilson's second wife, Edith, actually became something of the de facto President after her husband's stroke). It's hard to judge what effect the death of the First Lady had on their husband's administrations though. Tyler and Harrison are generally seen as mediocre executives, while Wilson tends to get high marks from historians.
Moreover, looking back on presidential marriages, one can see that marital bliss is not a prerequisite for a Chief Executive. Our greatest Presidents---Washington, Lincoln and FDR---all had marriages that ranged from the cool to the troubled---while some of our weakest Presidents, like John Adams, Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter had rock solid unions with their wives.
Nevertheless, it's one thing for a marriage to be less than perfect, but it's another thing to have a First Lady dying of cancer. Everyone who has had experience with cancer knows how traumatic the ordeal can be to patients and family alike. If Edwards is the caring individual that he makes himself out to be, there's no way he will be able to devote his full energy to running the country while his wife struggles with a devastating illness. And if Edwards is the sort of person who can ignore his spouse's suffering to focus 100% on his job, then he's not the sort of person I want in the Oval Office either.
Unless, of course, the alternative is a Republican.
--Utek1
(To reply, click here.)
It is just fine for him to set himself up as the "anti-Obama" and to tell Congress how to vote. But the fact is that he is NOT part of that vote and not part of Congress and no matter how he says what should be done, he is in no better position to say it than you are or than I am. He is nobody.
What Obama has going for him that Edwards does not is that Obama is actually a part of the process. Whatever Edwards' opinion is, is just wind.
I give Edwards an A for valiant effort. But when I imagine my President standing against seasoned, maybe even evil world leaders, I do not see Edwards there doing that job.
--Jen-10
(To reply, click here.)
(4/7)