Experience and John Edwards
E. J. Dionne nails it:
When you hear Republicans disparage Sen. John Edwards's lack of experience, remember the words of Sen. Orrin Hatch, spoken to George W. Bush at a debate on Dec. 6, 1999.
"You've been a great governor," Hatch declared of his rival for the Republican presidential nomination. "My only problem with you, governor, is that you've only had four and going into your fifth year of governorship. . . . Frankly, I really believe that you need more experience before you become president of the United States. That's why I'm thinking of you as a vice presidential candidate."
Which is exactly what Edwards was chosen for yesterday.
One Republican argument against Edwards was put out today by William Safire in the New York Times:
A larger question looms that confronts every presidential nominee: what if he wins and dies in office? In making his decision yesterday, Kerry should have kept that criterion of "the best man ready to take over" uppermost in his mind.
In my view, he failed that test.
If Bush can go directly to the Presidency with the little experience he had, then Edwards is certainly qualified to be Veep.
Besides unlike Bush, Edwards wasn't born a millionaire; he studied and worked hard and made his millions on his own. Edwards didn't have a connected family with ties to the oil business, or people looking to him favors because his father was President of the United States. All of which is to say, that Edwards's life experiences are more quintessentially American mythos than Bush's. And it's that experience that seems to me more important right now than Bush's silver-spooned (both in his mouth and during his formative years, up his nose) background.
It's really important that we have people in the White House who can relate to the experiences of the working poor. Edwards has those roots. Bush doesn't.
