Have you heard the one about the overly-cheery lawyer politician?
The Republicans have Presidents Reagan and Eisenhower; the poor Democrats have to make do with Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter and Lyndon Johnson.
This goes a long way towards explaining why the Democratic challenger John Kerry chose John Edwards as his running mate. Edwards is young, cheerful, energetic and optimistic, like Kennedy, whereas Kerry is craggy, leaden and negative.
As a bonus, Edwards the Southerner can take the fight to Bush’s Republicans in states like Virginia, South Carolina and Tennessee - something which Kerry, a liberal from the north, could never do. And Edwards’ progression from rags to riches (his father worked in a mill and he made a fortune as a trial lawyer taking on big corporations) is classic American. He epitomises the dream.
The question is, will Edwards prove a vote-winner for Kerry? Or will the voters conclude in the heat of the campaign that the Edwards ain’t no Jack Kennedy? It’s hard to know if the Edwards persona is genuine, or if he’s trying too hard to project an image of effortless glamour. One moment he is off-stage, serious looking and normal. Then his name is called out - he bounds up to the podium, faces the crowd, thrusts his hands in the air, his thumbs up, radiating energy and enthusiasm. Then the heartrending speech: “The truth is, there are two different Americas...one for all those families who have everything they need....and then there’s one for everybody else.”
American columnist Byron York notes how, once back on the campaign bus, the Edwards smile comes off and he is back to business, sitting down, beginning to read. “Then he looks to his left and realises that supporters have come outside in the cold to watch him through the bus’s window. All of a sudden, BAM! - it’s showtime again. The big Edwards smile and wave and hand gestures are back. For a moment it appears he might roll down the window and start talking about the two Americas. But there’s a plane to catch.”
Edwards tells supporters about his upbringing in the mill village - “I will never forget where I came from”, and his campaign ads feature that tiny house where the family once lived. But there is no mention of his father’s promotion at the mill when Edwards was one year old. And no photo of the fashionable house to which his family then moved and in which Edwards grew up.
That may give American voters pause for thought. It will certainly increase interest in the true test of a challenger for the vice-president’s job - the head-to-head television debates with the incumbent. To Democrats, Dick Cheney is every bit as loathsome as Bush. In particular, they cannot wait to see the vice president cross-examined about the Iraq contracts given to his old firm, Halliburton, by the US government. Who better than Edwards, a millionaire trial lawyer, to make the case for the prosecution on prime time TV? Edwards’ appeal here would be that his own personal story embodies his political rhetoric. His ‘two Americas’ purports to champion those who work over those with wealth. He portrays himself as the campaigning lawyer who took on the big corporate interests in court cases, and won great victories for the small man. Bush and Cheney, Edwards can easily argue, are the champions of big business - the people who give tax cuts to business to the disadvantage of lower earners.
This will play well with Americans who don’t believe they have done so well, economically, under Bush. But there are two downsides that the Democrats need to consider. One is that, since 1983, the number of Americans owning stocks and shares jumped from 19% to 52%. Tactically, attacking Wall Street may be out of date.
The second problem is that Edwards himself represents a very big player in American corporate life - the litigation industry. While Dick Cheney’s Halliburton had revenues of almost $19 billion over the last 12 months, and reported a profit margin of 2%, trial lawyers in the United States earned over $40bn in the same period - and had much higher profit margins.
In itself it will not be enough for the Republicans to emphasise that Edwards belongs to this elite club. Bush and Cheney represent elites as well, and American voters tend to admire self-made millionaires. But if the Republicans can show that the Democratic Party and its newest Golden Boy are in hock to the litigation industry, and point to rising costs of insurance and health care as a result - that may undo some of Edwards vote-getting potential.
IT WILL be fruitful campaigning ground. The American Trial Lawyers Association has led all others in political donations for more than a decade, and was the largest contributor to the Democratic Party in recent years. What’s more, 19 out of Edwards’ top 20 donors were plaintiffs’ lawyers, 86% of his Senate campaign contributions came from personal injury lawyers, and he has even availed of four private jets to fly him during his campaign - all of which were supplied by trial lawyer friends.
And why are lawyers so keen on John Edwards? Simple - since being elected to the Senate, he’s voted fanatically to protect their interests.
As for the outcome of the Presidential election, it is too early to call.
But Republicans are worried. The chief strategist of the Bush-Cheney campaign, Matt Dowd, predicted last week that Bush could be 15 percentage points behind Kerry by early next month - 55%-40%. No sitting president in modern times has ever recovered from such a deficit. A Washington Post poll shows that a large majority of voters believe America is on the wrong track - a critical test. The president’s approval rating is stuck at 45%. Experts say that incumbents need over 50% to win.
In all elections the key issue is trust. Only 39% of Americans described Bush as honest and trustworthy, as opposed to 52% for Kerry. The Senate Intelligence Committee may not have found that Bush lied about weapons in Iraq - in fact Bush was careful to insist that the truth should not be stretched to make the case for war - but nobody is in any doubt that US intelligence gathering was faulty and the administration exaggerated its case.
Perhaps more critically for Bush, over half the electorate still think the state of the economy is poor, despite the fact that the economy has been growing for the last 30 months and job creation is averaging 300,000 per month. The upturn is either not hitting home, or voters are no longer interested in giving the Republicans any of the credit for it.
It is too early for the Bush people to panic. But the bottom line is that Bush has not proved that he automatically deserves a second term. The consolation for the Republicans is that Kerry has struggled to show that he’s presidential material. And while Kerry has rowed back on Bush’s perceived superiority as a war leader, Americans may not want to take the chance.
And so enter Edwards. John Kerry is a rich man with a Boston accent. John Edwards is young, good looking and charismatic. The Democrats are gambling that together, they add up to a second JFK. Time will tell.
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