John Edwards Calls for Real Change

One thing I like about John Edwards is that he understands bandaids are no longer enough to deal with our nation's problems. Our nation has been muddling through various crises for a long time, frequently kicking the can down the road for the next guy to figure out. Health care is one of the more obvious crises out there but the crisis that has been ignored the longest is the lack of a real long-term energy policy. Over thirty years have passed since we knew we had a problem. And there's education, jobs and our broken foreign policy. To protect our future, we're going to need more than bandaids. Even the Republican Party's habit of essentially going backwards after years of simply going slow has become a national disgrace.

Conservative magazine U.S. News & World Report has a reasonable profile this week on John Edwards:

... The Democratic vice presidential candidate from 2004 is well known in political circles and has the kind of charisma that attracts news coverage-and crowds-wherever he goes. The problem is whether his new message of dramatic change will catch on, and that will depend on whether fellow Democrats are in a take-no-prisoners mood when the presidential primaries and caucuses start next January. Certainly, the ongoing debate in Congress over the Iraq war adds resonance to Edwards's outrage about the conflict and, more broadly, fuels his newfound frustration with the status quo. "I am the candidate of big, fundamental change," he told U.S. News.

Obviously, Edwards himself has changed considerably from the happy-face centrist who refrained from attack politics in '04. His appeal today is based in large part on his sharp-edged antiwar stand, which is more urgent and emotional than the positions of Senators Clinton and Obama. Edwards, reflecting the growing impatience of many rank-and-file Democrats nationwide, derides the nonbinding resolution now before Congress, which opposes President Bush's "surge" of 21,500 additional troops into Iraq. "Nonbinding resolutions don't stop the escalation of this war," Edwards told U.S. News. "It's time for Congress to use its power [over spending] to stop the escalation of this war and to keep this president from making another huge ... ego-driven mistake." ...

Part of the problem that Edwards faces is whether he can convince an increasingly entrenched media that it's time to change, that it's time to yield to America's powerful impulse to renew itself from time to time. At the moment, John Edwards and Barack Obama are the two candidates who appeal to me the most though I'll support whoever wins the nomination, including Hillary Clinton who indeed seems to favor more bandaids. But Edwards has the clearest message, and perhaps understanding, of the profound need for change. The task is for him to explain what some of that change has to be and how it can be accomplished. Whoever wins the White House in 2008 is likely to be someone who has decided 'staying the course' is no longer an option in this era of American politics.