Understanding John Edwards

How should we think about John Edwards and his endorsement of Barack Obama?

I think the immediate coverage of the event has been mostly wrong. While watching TV last night, most commentators I saw thought Edwards would help Obama woo those white, working-class voters who have famously eluded his charms. Some even speculated that Edwards would do what no other politician, as far as I know, has ever done--accept the veep spot twice, for two different candidates, which is a little like being Ed McMahon or Andy Richter for two different late-night hosts, a position that's at once flattering and slightly demeaning.

There's a lot to commend John Edwards on. He's obviously an accomplished trial lawyer and a good campaigner. As Paul Krugman has noted, he probably did a lot to shift the debate in the Democratic primaries by being the first to come out for a large tax increase--the repeal of the Bush tax cuts for high earners--and propose shifting the money toward a large expansion of health care for the uninsured. Hillary Clinton's health-care plan was so close to Edwards' that he accused her of plagiarism. Obama's health-care plan, despite its lack of a Clinton-Edwards-style mandate, buys into the North Carolinian's basic formula of transferring billions in tax hikes to the uninsured. So score one for Edwards for shifting the debate. And his concern with poverty has probably been the greatest of any presidential candidate's since Jesse Jackson in 1988 or Bobby Kennedy in 1968. And of course, Edwards and his wife Elizabeth's gracious handling of her cancer have touched the nation.

But let's not overstate Edwards' power as a campaigner and what he can do for Obama. Edwards did not win a single caucus or primary in 2008. He ended his campaign--essentially a four-year effort that began the day John Kerry conceded defeat in 2004--with a mere 19 delegates. Had he not managed to barely come in second ahead of Clinton in the Iowa caucuses, even this minimal accomplishment would have been diminished. To suddenly suggest that John Edwards is now a spiritual leader for the white, working class is kind of nuts.

To understand why Edwards is less than politically potent you have to go back to the 2004 presidential cycle. Edwards, faced with the extremely daunting prospect of running for a second U.S. Senate term in North Carolina, decided not to seek reelection and to run for the presidency. Pre-Obama, it was startling for someone with so little time on the national scene to seek the presidency. (At least by 1968 Bobby Kennedy, though in his first term as a senator form New York State, had been attorney general.) Edwards ran for president in 2004 without the populist tenor that marked his 2008 campaign. If anything, the 2004 campaign is remembered for its emphasis on optimism rather than economics as he became the sunny choice nestled in between Howard Dean and John Kerry--a niche that quickly faded.

As 2004 progressed, Edwards, of course, became Kerry's running mate. Given this most impressive of perches, what did Edwards do with his platform? At the 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston, he gave a mediocre speech once again emphasizing his theme about "two Americas." The speech was completely overshadowed by the one delivered by then-Illinois Senator Barack Obama, whose idea of "one America" was far more compelling. I wondered at the time whether Kerry, as the nominee, would advocate one-and-a-half Americas.

In the fall campaign, Edwards was a bust. There was no chance he could deliver his home state of North Carolina and he was frequently dispatched to Ohio and the upper Midwest, where he failed to drive up those white working-class voters. What's more, in his most prominent moment of the fall campaign, Edwards at best came to a draw with Dick Cheney in their nationally televised debate. Cheney is far better in the small setting of the seated debate than is remembered. He did well against, if not better than, Joe Lieberman in 2000, back when Lieberman was a rock star among Democrats. If the silver-tongue orator of North Carolina could not take down Cheney, what good was he as a nominee?

The months and years afterward did Edwards some good and some harm. He honed his poverty message and moved to the left on economics. For instance, in his own 2004 presidential bid, Edwards did not offer nearly so bold a health-care plan as he would in 2008. And he smartly apologized for his pro-war vote--a move that, perhaps in retrospect, Hillary Clinton may wish she had made. But his personal behavior was at times unctuous. He violated the tacit rule of former prospective veeps and was less than kind toward John Kerry, sparking tensions between the two camps and helping turn Kerry into an early Obama supporter.

So did Obama gain from the Edwards endorsement? Of course, it helps kick Clinton's West Virginia win off the front page. Will it really make the white, working-class voters along the Ohio River and elsewhere throughout the country flock to Barack Obama? Will it help come fall? Ask John Kerry.

PHOTO: Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama and former rival John Edwards greet the crowds during a May 14 rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images