I saw the other day that The New Republic was praising Dem presidential candidate John Edwards for pushing a requirement that companies expense stock options as part of his campaign’s emphasis on the economy and corporate reform.
As the magazine explained, most Dem candidates won’t touch this issue because Silicon Valley’s high-tech crowd, which has lots of money and is generally liberal, opposes the move. Edwards, however, doesn’t seem to care, telling an audience in New Hampshire this week, “If we’re going to restore values to our economy, we need to do the right thing here.”
While Edwards certainly deserves the praise, it got me thinking: Edwards seems to do this kind of thing a lot. I’m not sure if this makes him a brave leader, a dumb candidate, or both, but his tendency to say what he thinks despite potentially negative consequences from key constituencies warrants additional attention.
We saw our first sign of this in March when Edwards spoke to a state convention of the California Democratic Party. The audience seemed to like him and his message when he talked about domestic policy, but as soon as Edwards mentioned his support for the war, they booed him relentlessly. Edwards didn’t back down and forcefully explained why he supported “regime change” in Iraq. It took guts, to be sure. Edwards could have just glossed over this point of disagreement or ignored it all together, but he didn’t.
In May, Edwards challenged some of his closest allies — trial lawyers — in a Washington Post op-ed on medical malpractice reform. He expressed support for “aggressive action against frivolous lawsuits that don’t belong in court.”
Slate’s William Saletan sat in on a townhall forum with Edwards the other day and saw him refuse to pander to the audience, telling them what he believed, not what he thought they wanted to hear.
When someone asked if he’d support use of medical marijuana, he said he wouldn’t until the medical debate was settled, despite the fact that the questioner was looking for the opposite answer. When pressed to endorse gay marriage, Edwards says he’d support domestic partnership rights, but not marriage — a position that has no discernable differences from Howard Dean’s take on the issue, and Dean is a darling of the gay rights movement.
Speaking of Dean, he’s won acclaim for “straight talk” about Bush and Republicans, saying the things that other Dem candidates (and voters) seem to believe but are unwilling to say publicly. To me, however, that seems quite a bit easier than what Edwards is doing. Dean is telling angry liberal audiences about how awful the Bush administration is and he’s praised for using stronger language than is usually heard from a presidential candidate.
That’s fine, I guess, but at its core, Dean’s message to Dem primary voters isn’t that daring. After all, he’s feeding red meat to a hungry audience.
Edwards, meanwhile, is doing largely the opposite, telling some of the same audiences things they may not want to hear, but that he nevertheless believes. This reminds me more of John McCain’s 2000 campaign than Dean does. McCain didn’t earn a reputation as a “straight talker” for telling Republican audiences about his disgust for Clinton/Gore, he garnered respect from everyone, including the media, for taking the GOP to task on areas where criticism was warranted — the party’s inappropriate ties to the religious right, the lack of a need for huge tax cuts for the wealthy, the party’s embrace of racist symbols and institutions like the Confederate flag and Bob Jones University, etc.
I don’t know if primary voters will give Edwards credit for his bravery or find these areas of disagreement to be obstacles that his campaign cannot overcome. Either way, I’ve got to respect Edwards for speaking his mind.