{"id":571,"date":"2003-08-29T10:04:05","date_gmt":"2003-08-29T15:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/571.html"},"modified":"2003-08-29T10:04:05","modified_gmt":"2003-08-29T15:04:05","slug":"john-edwards-right-to-leave-tragedy-out-of-the-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/john-edwards-right-to-leave-tragedy-out-of-the-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"John Edwards right to leave tragedy out of the campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"

I noticed that The New Republic’s campaign blog praised John Edwards<\/a> for a recent decision not to answer a question about his son who died in a car accident several years ago. TNR is right and I wanted to offer kudos of my own.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, Edwards was hosting one of his many town hall meetings, this one in Manchester, N.H. As TNR mentioned, Edwards “typically shines in these forums.” They’re clearly his best setting; the meetings allow Edwards to play to his strength — connecting voters on a personal level.<\/p>\n

During the event, one attendee asked Edwards, “How has the death of your son altered or reinforced your political views?”<\/p>\n

Edwards could have answered the question any number of different ways, but he did the right thing by not answering the question at all.<\/p>\n

“For those of you who don’t know, my son Wade, who’s my oldest child, died in an automobile accident seven years ago,” Edwards said. “I appreciate you asking, it’s a perfectly fair and reasonable question, I would respectfully decline to answer. I think that’s personal to me and personal to my family.”<\/p>\n

All too often, there’s a temptation to try to capitalize on a tragedy for political gain. Al Gore, for example, used his sister’s death in his 1996 Democratic National Convention speech. Dick Gephardt frequently mentions his son’s childhood illness in his stump speeches.<\/p>\n

I’m not necessarily condemning Gore or Gephardt for sharing these personal experiences, but I think Edwards’ decision to keep this personal tragedy private demonstrates a lot of class.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I noticed that The New Republic’s campaign blog praised John Edwards for a recent decision not to answer a question about his son who died in a car accident several years ago. TNR is right and I wanted to offer kudos of my own. Earlier this week, Edwards was hosting one of his many town […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}