Edwards needs to follow - up to January speech

[surfermaw]

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/opinion/7822046.htmPosted on Thu, Jan. 29, 2004

Edwards needs follow-up to January speech
The happy populist rides to prominence on `Two Americas' theme
DAVID BROOKS
New York Times

NASHUA, N.H. - A couple of weeks ago one of John Edwards' aides showed me, in the manner of one unveiling the Dead Sea Scrolls, the original draft of The January Speech.

Edwards had spent much of the fall showing that he was more than a slick trial lawyer, and the new January speech was to differentiate himself from the other candidates.

Edwards collected his thoughts over a few weeks and must have written them down quickly. There were about 25 words scrawled illegibly over two sheets of spiral notebook paper. On the page it's a mess, but coming out of his mouth it's a thing of beauty. In a year in which all the candidates are saying pretty much the same thing, one eloquent speech has propelled Edwards from the ranks of the hopeless to the ranks of the plausible.

The speech is built around the theme that has dominated the Democratic campaign this year: That we are a nation divided. You may have looked at the last several election results and concluded that we are a nation split roughly in half. But according to Edwards and the other Democratic candidates, we are actually a nation divided between the top 2 percent, the rich, powerful insiders -- "those who never have to worry about a thing," as Edwards puts it -- and the 98 percent, us ordinary folks.

This particular version of the Two Americas theme is sociologically, politically, economically and demographically false, but it is rhetorically quite effective. It means that all these problems that seem intractable are actually solvable if we just take power away from that selfish sliver. Government will begin to work for the people again; all students will have access to first-rate education; regular folks will have a health care system that works for them. It's all imminent!