I feel tremendously sorry for John Edwards. If this were an election year in...say....2000 or earlier, me might actually have a shot at winning the Democratic nomination. But with the glitz and glamour of Barack and Hillary, he is being lost in the shuffle. That's too bad. He would make an excellent president and here's why.One of his central tenets is that America needs to restore its moral leadership in the world. For the last six years, that leadership has eroded. Contrary to what we here from Bush Co, detaining people without a trial, torturing them, and being partly responsible for the deaths of a few hundred thousand people isn't a blueprint for leadership. Of all the candidates, Edwards is the only one talking about the morality of what we are doing in the Middle East.
His plan for health care is nothing short of stellar. Take a look at it here. It's Universal Health Care through shared responsibility. Everyone from the individual all the way up to the federal government takes responsibility for the care of the nation. It is an extremely comprehensive plan that works to solve the problem that 18,000 people die every year in this country due to lack of access to health care because of the fact that they are uninsured. And it encourages competition between private and public providers so the notion of one monolithic and lumbering public health system is not an issue.
He wants to seriously address global warming, end our addiction to oil through alternative fuel sources, and eliminate poverty by creating opportunity for everyone as well as instilling civic responsibility in every American. His fact sheet on these three problems, click here, offer one comprehensive solution for all.
His only drawback that I can see is that he lacks specifics on what to do about Iraq but his general vision about the Middle East is right on the money. It is for these reasons that I score him at the highest possible B known to man, barely missing the coveted A of my final two candidates.
On Tuesday, I will be putting up my pick for the best Republican candidate. After that and throughout next week, I will be putting up videos from You Tube, pictures, various writings and inspirations about the man who I think would be an exceptional leader.
4 comments:
John Edward is a trial lawyer. Nothing more needs to be said.
John Edwards is perhaps the most condescending candidate in America. Interestingly, you bring up morality, when I cannot believe that word would be used in the same sentence along with any trial lawyer, John Edwards in particular. There’s a reason lawyers are consistently rated as the most despised profession.
I can appreciate that John Edwards is a self-made man. I respect that a lot. And politicians being politicians, that they’ll milk every story; so I give them a bit of leeway. But, John Edwards is simply not an honest man.
You’ve all heard his stump speeches. And even if you haven’t, you know how it goes: there's one America where Dick Cheney's oil buddies are drinking martinis and toasting their war profits; but there's another America where "a 10-year-old little girl will go to bed hungry, hoping and praying that tomorrow will not be as cold as today because she doesn't have the coat to keep her warm". There’s not a dry eye in the house. Liberals are weeping over the horror of it all. Conservatives are weeping with laughter.
Another favorite story is that "he bears the memory of his father taking the family to a local restaurant after church only to leave when he realized he could not afford anything on the menu." Really? His home town had a population of approx. 1,000 people, so presumably there were only a handful of restaurants. In small towns, folks generally know what the local eateries charge. And, while the Edwards family was poor by John Kerry standards, dad was in fact the mill's production manager (though that tidbit is usually left out of these tales of woe). So, in a mill town, at a restaurant presumably priced to cater to mill workers, the management of the mill couldn't afford to eat? I find that very hard to believe.
Healthcare has been a pretty hot topic here of late and promises to return w/ Michael Moore’s new film. In his "two Americas" routine, Edwards talks about his commitment to "bringing down the cost of healthcare" but he consistently shys away from tort reform. Why is that? Probably because one reason it costs more than it did is because of Edwards and his fellow ambulance-chasers. John Edwards made his name with a 1985 cerebral palsy case claiming a c-section would have prevented the cerebral palsy. However, the correlation between C-sections and birth defects is non-existent. Edwards sold junk-science to jury after jury, for big bucks. Thanks in part to lawyers like Edwards, there are now far more caesarean sections than ever before, yet no reduction in birth defects. And, as an ancillary benefit, doctors, hospitals & clinics are forced to cover themselves with ridiculously high amounts of malpractice insurance.
And the top story from John Edwards? "If we do the work that we can do in this country, people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again." Hope is good, but false hope is terrible. Deliberately raising false hope in the catastrophically afflicted is despicable. The answer to spinal cord regeneration is not just around the corner; it could take a generation to find answers. To imply that it is tied to any single line of research, or worse that it is imminent, if only you elect the right politicians, is scandalous.
John Edwards: D
Well said Dave. Edwards is a phony. Worse than Gore
Edwards is everything that is wrong with the Democrats, he is hypocrite and cut from the same cloth as the Tammany Hall Democrats in 19th Century New York.
I hope he gets the nomination. Then we might actually have a chance of winning.
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