E-Mail This Article to a Friend John Edwards Why he makes sense

THE VICE-PRESIDENCY," said John Nance Garner, "ain’t worth a bucket of warm spit." And he ought to have known. As Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Garner was a national power; as Franklin Roosevelt’s number-two man he was — like his predecessors — a political eunuch, capable of effect only by stealth or with the approval of his master.

Recent history has been kinder to vice-presidents. Walter Mondale enjoyed real influence as Jimmy Carter’s constitutional back-up. Al Gore was perhaps an even more vital spark plug in Bill Clinton’s engine. And Dick Cheney, God help us all, enjoys real influence with George W. Bush.

If, of course, John Kerry is elected president, it remains to be seen whether his choice for vice-president, North Carolina senator John Edwards, will be a force or a footnote. On the primary-campaign trail, however, Edwards cut a strong figure, prompting even spoiler Ralph Nader to remark months ago — without a trace of vinegar — that Kerry would be wise to pick him as his running mate.

Now that the choice is made, Edwards has a clear-cut role: to help Kerry beat Bush and, let’s not forget, Nader. Edwards’s telegenic good looks, easy manner, and — most important of all — populist instincts should buttress the appeal of the more experienced but still aloof Kerry.

No other vice-presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson, a Washington warhorse who helped the relatively untested John Kennedy squeak by the formidable ticket of Richard Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge, has had to carry such weight.

Anyone who doubts that Edwards is up to the task need only look to the swine in the Republican barnyard for reassurance. Once Kerry’s choice was clear, the slimesters wasted no time in launching their muck at Edwards.

The Republicans have good reason to worry. No sitting president with approval ratings as low as Bush’s has been re-elected. But those — like us — who view Bush as a friend of the rich and an enemy of all others, a threat to liberty at home and stability abroad, cannot afford to take solace in the antiseptic science of statistics. Lives and liberties are in the balance. Four more years of Bush and Cheney offer only despair. Kerry and Edwards offer hope.

Hope is a commodity in short supply these days. Too many of us who are prosperous fear that our well-being is a thin veneer. For too many more of us, even the thought of prosperity is a too-distant dream. That is the legacy of Ronald Reagan’s America, where tax breaks reward the rich already flush with unequal gains made from rapacious corporate consolidation and deregulation.

Since Reagan, the Republicans have managed to convince a majority of the nation repeatedly to elect a Congress that votes against the economic interests of the middle class, let alone the poor. This is the perverse genius of their accomplishment. We’re not suggesting that Kerry, reinforced by Edwards, will roll back that trend. But we believe that their election will halt its growth. Reclaiming the nation that the many have sadly ceded to the few will take years.

It is in this arena that Edwards might best help Kerry.

There is no question that Kerry had a privileged upbringing, but his family’s means were modest compared with those of the Bushes. It’s true that his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, is a very wealthy woman, but her money belongs to the family of her late husband, a well-respected Republican senator who hailed to the principled — as opposed to the opportunistic — wing of his party and who was a friend of John Kerry’s.

Nevertheless, Kerry is curiously unconvincing when he tries to persuade voters that he is on the side of the common man, not the malefactors of great wealth. Despite his innate intelligence and raw experience, Kerry’s natural aristocratic style compromises the substance of his economic message. And then there is his unwillingness to lie as George Bush lies. Where Kerry splits hairs, Bush calls black white.

In a narrow, tactical sense, John Edwards’s role is to humanize the Democratic ticket. Before he was elected to the Senate from North Carolina, Edwards was a trial lawyer who made millions representing small people who juries decided had been wronged by larger interests. It is certainly melodramatic to say that he and Kerry must convince American voters to reverse themselves and reject the Reagan-Bush vision of America. But that doesn’t make it any less true.

Bush and Cheney hijacked the last presidential election with the connivance of state officials in Florida, where Jeb Bush is governor, and an assist by the US Supreme Court. The war and the quagmire in Iraq was the result.

We don’t envy Kerry and Edwards the job of righting Bush’s wrongs. But they will get our enthusiastic vote, and — we hope — yours. Hope for peace, prosperity, and justice is what this election is all about.

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