John Edwards has a chest-thumping new ad, in which he threatens Congress and his own putative future cabinet with the loss of their health care, if they don’t do his bidding and pass universal health care:
Mickey Kaus and the Hillary Clinton campaign and even one of the DailyKos contributors all make versions of the same critique: No can do, Bubba. Your “power as president” doesn’t extend to interfering unilaterally with the compensation packages of congressmen. Edwards’s threat is obviously theatrical. But it’s terrible theater on a deeper level than his liberal critics realize. Edwards wants to expand the federal role in the health-care market. Meanwhile, he thinks it’s fine and dandy to use access to health care as a form of political blackmail. Sounds like an excellent reason (a) never to trust this man with executive power and (b) to keep power-mad politicians as far away from the health-care system as we can.
