John Edwards Marches On As Media Fails America

The arrogance of empire lives on. The Russians had their useless imperial court. The French nobility had their wigs, salons and vicious gossip. America has the Washington press corps and their ridiculous 'conventional wisdom.' Whether it's making jokes about Gore's style of talking despite how often the former vice president has nailed the issues of the day, or talking about John Edwards haircut and whether his war on poverty is 'sincere' or not, or sniggering when Nancy Pelosi goes to Europe for a global warming conference, the Washington press corps continues to collect their high salaries while poorly serving Americans as Bush stumbles into crisis after crisis while having his staff write pretty reports.

But a number of Democrats march on, doing their best in these strange times. One of them is presidential hopeful John Edwards who notices the poor quality of the Republican presidential field, characters unwilling to admit what a failure Bush has been and unwilling to admit the fiasco that has become Iraq. Here's the AP story in the International Herald Tribune:

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards argued on Thursday that President George W. Bush has made the United States less safe and that Republican candidates are trying to become "a bigger, badder George Bush."

Edwards' remarks came one day after he challenged the idea of a global fight against terrorism, calling it an ideological doctrine advanced by the Bush administration that has strained the U.S. military and emboldened terrorists.

Bush told reporters Thursday that Edwards' view was naive.

Edwards is naive? Bush is still reluctant to take off his training wheels after six years in office. How long should a president be given to get it right? Everything Bush has said about Iraq and why we're there has fallen apart. And if ever there was a naive politician, it was Paul Wolfowitz, Bush's number two man at the Pentagon and Bush's theorist for the war in Iraq. Wolfowitz had the arrogant and ultimately naive idea that if you apply just the right amount of force, not too much and not too little, you can get the exact result you want in the Middle East. Does anyone see anything like that happening?

Republicans should be held accountable for their foolish, uninformed comments about foreign policy. Puffing your chest out, fearmongering and otherwise not knowing what you're talking about is no way to run a foreign policy. Bush is an incompetent. Al Qaida is stronger today because their biggest recruiter is President Bush; because of Bush's inflammatory rhetoric, his incompetence and his unwillingness to make clear what we're trying to do in Iraq, we're worse off today than we were four years ago. The media shrugs and the war goes on, without purpose, without any real examination of the facts (particularly by the Republican presidential candidates who seem to vow to give us more of the same) and without the kind of leadership America deserves. Edwards may or may not win the Democratic nomination, let alone the presidency, but he clearly is one of the few responsible voices speaking out.