Boston
“WHERE’S THE BEEF?” was the question 20 years ago about Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart. He talked about the importance of issues, but the talk was substance-free. Now, the question about Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards is “where’s the heft?” If he has any–any special wisdom or significant lessons or keen policy insights learned from his time as a plaintiff’s lawyer or senator–he hasn’t let on. On the contrary, those who watched Edwards’s glib speech to the Democratic convention Wednesday discovered there’s an incredible thinness to his words.
He’s been delivering the same speech for months now, merely adding here praise for the man who picked him as his running mate, John Kerry, and some hawkish sentences on Iraq. He could have given most of the speech as a first-time Senate candidate in 1998. It’s a speech with no takeaway–no solid and clear message–except that Edwards is a mighty fine orator with a wonderful smile.
One of Edwards’s favorite gimmicks is to insist discussions of “race, equality, and civil rights” should be included in speeches “everywhere,” not just to targeted audiences. Then he quickly changes the subject without any serious discussion of the subject at all. The whole thing turns out to be a rhetorical device, nothing more. It’s reminiscent of Hart.
What Edwards is most associated with is the idea of “two Americas,” one rich and privileged, the other stuck with second-class schools and health care and subsistence-level jobs. But he gives no evidence of having thought this idea through. In fact, his own biography undermines the very notion of two Americas. Edwards rose from humble origins, the son of a mill worker, to become a skilled and wealthy trial lawyer. He says “everything is possible” in America, oblivious to how this statement contradicts his theme of two Americas.
Indeed, practically everything is possible. Tens of millions of Americans have risen from the lower rungs economically to achieve remarkable success. Like Edwards, they weren’t locked in a lesser America. Opportunity is everywhere. Bill Clinton seized it in Arkansas. Barak Obama, the black state senator who delivered the keynote address at the convention and is all but certain to win a U.S. Senate seat this fall, grabbed it in Illinois.
Edwards doesn’t understand–or chooses to ignore–that America is an extraordinarily mobile society. People move from job to job, usually for higher pay and more satisfying work. They start businesses. Those in the bottom fifth of the economy routinely soar to the top fifth in a few years. Social mobility is the name of the game. It’s a more rough-and-tumble sort of capitalism than exists in Europe, but it works to produce amazing wealth. One fruit is home ownership. More than two-thirds of Americans own their homes and a higher rate of ownership record is achieved every year.
But even if there were two Americas, Edwards’s solutions would not help. His answer is to curb the activity of lobbyists in Washington and boost the minimum wage. And he wants to raise taxes in the top economic brackets, going after the very entrepreneurs and small business owners who create most of the new jobs in America. Soak-the-rich is neither a new idea nor a good one.
Nor is industrial policy. Edwards said this in his convention speech: “We will invest in the jobs of the future–in the technologies and innovation to ensure that America stays ahead of the competition.” The truth is that America has stayed ahead of the world in technology partly because government hasn’t been investing and interfering and regulating. Left alone, the high tech sector has boomed far beyond what anyone in government, Democrat or Republican, might have imagined.
The task Edwards faces in running against Vice President Dick Cheney is to show he’s not just a man with a glib tongue. He needs to show he has depth and clarity of vision and a sharp intelligence. So far, he hasn’t come close. So the question stands unanswered, where’s the heft?
Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.
