The Anti-Clinton, John Edwards so wants to be President that he has spent the past f

The Anti-Clinton, John Edwards so wants to be President that he has spent the past f
The Anti-ClintonBy ditching the formula of one Clinton, John Edwards aims to upset the otherBy PERRY BACON JR.SUBSCRIBE TO TIMEPRINTE-MAILMORE BY AUTHORPosted Friday, Jan. 5, 2007John Edwards so wants to be President that he has spent the past four years campaigning for the job nonstop, practically living in Iowa since the 2004 election. He starts his second run for the Oval Office with a solid foundation: polls show him as one of the top Democratic contenders in the Hawkeye State, where voters liked his relaxed, guy-next-door manner and optimistic message in 2004 and have appreciated his many visits since. So what is the ex--North Carolina Senator and former vice-presidential nominee doing dumping the centrism that was key to putting the past two Democrats in the White House? Why is he tacking sharply to the left? As Jesse Jackson, Bill Bradley and Howard Dean could tell you, the most liberal of the Democratic contenders hasn't even won the nomination since 1972.Although in 2004 he spoke eloquently of the "Two Americas"--rich and poor--if you looked at the fine print, Edwards backed ideas that originated in the centrist group that created much of Bill Clinton's agenda, the Democratic Leadership Council. Not this time. Many of the proposals for middle-class tax cuts from Edwards' first run won't be on his platform. Edwards says the country can't afford them and the bigger goals he wants to pursue. He says the problems in the U.S. are too pressing for the incremental solutions he proposed last time. So on the day he announced his presidential candidacy, Edwards boldly declared that reducing the deficit, a hallmark of the Clinton Administration, was less important to him than spending government money on, among other things, creating a universal health-care system and stopping global warming. His call to end poverty in the U.S. over the next 30 years by spending more than $15 billion each year sounds like a plan ripped straight from Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, the kind of Big Government liberalism Clinton shunned. Clinton did all kinds of things to show he was pro-business, while last August in Pittsburgh at a rally sponsored by an anti--Wal-Mart group, Edwards blasted the company for not paying its workers enough. Although Edwards got much of his advice in 2004 from centrists like Bruce Reed, Clinton's ex-- policy guru, the Edwards '08 campaign is being run by David Bonior, a former Michigan Congressman who strongly opposed Clinton's welfare reform and free-trade deals in the 1990s.The economic populism Edwards talked about in 2004 and has now fully embraced was a winning formula in 2006 for many Democratic congressional candidates--even after Republicans depicted them as big spenders. But presidential candidates are judged by different criteria. Moving to the left doesn't answer one of the main critiques of Edwards in the last campaign: his lack of foreign policy experience. And taking up liberalism may be particularly dangerous for Edwards now that Democrats control Congress, since a G.O.P. opponent could argue that voters would have no check on spending if Edwards were elected.But Edwards has to win his party's nomination first. If Hillary Clinton runs, she could immediately become the front runner, picking up much of the money and endorsements from the party establishment. The remaining energy, activism and cash that any rival would need to challenge her are on the left, not the center, as Edwards discovered in 2004, when Dean badly outraised him. That's why Edwards has spent the past two years actively courting the liberal netroots, even hiring Dean's old blogger, and wooing top union bosses. Edwards' attacks on Wal-Mart, which has discouraged its workers from forming unions, and his calls for universal health care are beloved by labor leaders, who could give Edwards a major lift in the early primaries in Iowa and Nevada, where their organizations are influential in Democratic politics.The Edwards strategy would be complicated by a presidential run by Senator Barack Obama, which is why Edwards aides have watched Obama's rise with trepidation. Obama too is very well liked by the left. But both Obama and Hillary Clinton act like front runners: cautiously. They often deploy platitudes (witness Obama's speeches about hope) and look for easy targets (note Clinton's sermonizing on violent video games). That leaves room to emerge as the candidate who connects with Democratic voters by saying bold things that appeal to liberals, as when Edwards wrote "I was wrong" in voting for the Iraq war in an Op-Ed in the Washington Post in the fall of 2005. Dean employed this aggressive strategy in 2004 but couldn't win the nomination because he was viewed as too feisty and angry to be President. But if you're going to take your party in a new direction, it helps to be like Edwards, a smooth-talking Southern charmer with a light drawl whom Bill Clinton himself described as being able to "talk an owl out of a tree." That's where the ex-President's model may suit Edwards just fine.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1574171-1,00.html