John Edwards' untapped political strength

6-15-03

By EDWARD CONE
News & Record

John Edwards says he's a champion for the little guy, but he needs to take on the big guys to prove it.

What sets North Carolina's senior senator apart from the other leading Democratic contenders for the White House -- if that phrase isn't too much of an oxymoron -- is his track record of standing up to powerful corporate interests as a successful trial lawyer.

OK, he's also got the dewy good looks that allow Bush partisans to dismiss him as "the Breck Girl," and the nice back-story of a mill-town boy made good. But in terms of substance, Edwards can pitch himself as a man who has taken on corporate greed and beaten it in court.

The only problem is that people dislike lawyers as much as they dislike greedy companies -- or at least they have until recently. While the tort industry continues to attract criticism, some of it well deserved, the image of big business may have sunk even lower.

Edwards enters the national arena at a moment when corporate bogeymen are everywhere. Enron and WorldCom stole our money. Media domination by a handful of huge companies has been greenlighted by the Republican majority at the FCC. And while stocks and earnings have been recovering, jobs are still scarce.

If Edwards can cast himself as a sophisticated economic populist, someone who understands the good things that corporations do as well as the bad ones, maybe his campaign can get some traction. People have complicated feelings about global capitalism, recognizing it as a great engine of wealth creation that often grinds up individuals, industries and whole regions for fuel. There's not much call these days to dismantle the system, but there is a sense that things are too one-sided and that regular people have lost control of their own destinies.

Edwards could capitalize on that perception at a time when the political risks to a Democrat of trying to humanize the economy are mitigated by the Bush administration's habit of running up deficits and chasing every middle-class entitlement in sight. He doesn't need to quit bathing and smash shop windows in Seattle, just lay out a platform that shows he'll fight for working folks, in ways that go beyond Bush's tax cuts on corporate dividends and CEO salaries.

One place Edwards might take a stand is on trade. As a senator from a state that has seen its textile industry devastated, with furniture manufacturing not too far behind, he should be able to muster some outrage. (Bush isn't going to do anything for North Carolina workers -- unlike the steelworkers of Pennsylvania -- as long as he knows we're a red state already.) Edwards has already shown some backbone in the Senate, supporting an early version of a trade bill that favored the textile industry, then voting against the bill when those favorable provisions didn't make the final draft.

Surely we are far enough into the free trade era to reconsider what fair trade might look like without being labeled as protectionists. It may be that textiles were fated to move out of North Carolina just as they moved here from New England more than a century ago. That doesn't diminish the long-term danger to the larger U.S. economy posed by trade and budget deficits. Edwards should hammer home some of the unfair aspects of trade policy -- the way U.S. companies have to compete against state-owned and subsidized firms, the impossible math of trading with fixed-rate currencies, the expenses imposed on domestic concerns for employee benefits and regulatory items before they pay a dime in salary.

So far -- and it's still ridiculously early -- Edwards doesn't seem to be very interested in trying out new ideas. It's a small example, but just look at his stale Web presence. Although I mentioned weblogs (the ultimate little-guy media) to Edwards last fall and bent his press aide's ear about them for a while, his campaign appears too busy raising money from trial lawyers to worry about the grass roots. Meanwhile, Howard Dean has seized some momentum and a lot of media attention, in part by running a campaign weblog and sparking a passionate online community.

It will be tough for any Democrat to unseat a wartime president next fall. Certainly running as Bush Lite won't do the trick. Yet people are hurting at home, and that's where a bold John Edwards could make his move. Or he can run as the Breck Girl.

Edward Cone (efcone@mindspring.com, www.edcone.com) contributes a column to the News & Record on Sunday.

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