Posted on 05/30/2007 3:53:09 PM PDT by Baladas
He was comfortable after his conversations with Gephardt, but even queasier about Edwards after they met. Edwards had told Kerry he was going to share a story with him that he'd never told anyone else—that after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he'd do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade's ideals of service. Kerry was stunned, not moved, because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the same exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before—and with the same preface, that he'd never shared the memory with anyone else. .
On the day the Edwards pick was made public, Edwards and I talked for the first time since I had informed him of our decision to work for Kerry and he had reacted angrily. He said he knew I'd helped get him on the ticket and he was grateful. I told him that I welcomed the possibility that we might be friends again, but that wasn't the reason for my preference. I believed it was the right move for Kerry. Kerry's relationship with Edwards would sour after the election—and mine would simply fade away. When Elizabeth discovered she had breast cancer, John and Teresa reached out to help the Edwardses find the best doctors they could. Marylouise and I called—but afterward, never heard from John again. Maybe we shouldn't have expected to. Kerry told me that the Edwardses simply stopped returning calls or talking to him and Teresa. Within months, Edwards started preparing for a bid in 2008. Kerry said that he wished he'd never picked Edwards, that he should have gone with his gut.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
“I think both men are rotten sick apples to the core.”
Dittos to that! What is it that Rush says, “Phoney baloney, plastic banana, good time, rock and rollers”?
OR Savage’s “Red Diaper Doper Babies”.
Bob Shrum---the Tampa Bay Devil Rays of retail politics. That's who.
>>Kerry said that he wished he’d never picked Edwards, that he should have gone with his gut.
:)
>>A quiet round of polling helped guide the search. Hillary Clinton had high negatives—she would hurt the ticket
But she’s good enough to be heading the prez ticket this time
around...?
The Iraq Vote:
>>To my continuing regret, I said he had to be for it. As I listened to this, I watched Edwards’s face; he didn’t like where he was being pushed to go.
Being pushed to vote for it, but:
>>if he really was against the war, it was up to him to stand his ground. He didn’t.
Feet of clay.
>>As Kerry’s running mate, Gephardt’s campaigning and the institutional forces in Missouri might have given us a chance in the state, and he might have boosted us a little in Ohio, maybe just enough.
And if Edwards had...WON HIS HOME STATE...that could have put them over the top, too...
It will never happen. My wife still celebrates JFK's (Kennedy's) birthday.
Shocking, isn’t it?
This article is truly bizarre. John Edwards is either the most plastic opportunist ever or he has a couple of screws loose.
On many levels, Edwards is unfit to be a man, much less a President.
Congressman Billybob
One of the most remarkable stories I read about his campaign involved an interview with a hard-core, life-long Democrat who had been involved in New Hampshire politics for years. When asked by the author of the article who he was supporting in the 2004 primary race, the guy pointed to Edwards (the interview took place at the end of an Edwards campaign appearance in New Hampshire) and said: "I'm supporting anyone but that guy."
From the tone of the article, it was apparent that the press corps covering the Edwards campaign considered the assignment so tiresome that it was downright torturous. He gave the same stupid speech every day -- even at multiple campaign appearances within the same day -- and in many cases even included references to something that happened "that day" as if he was giving the speech for the first and only time.
By the end of the first week the media had recognized him as a complete phone who epitomized the mediocrity that had come to dominate national politics. Covering his campaign was like watching Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day," only this time they were agonizingly wishing that he'd never wake up again.
This guy is really weird, I’ll go with the loose screws.
Kerry acts as if he had any say in the matter. We all know this decision is made by party insiders without any regard for what the candidate thinks.
Remember that Al Gore was one of the last people in the political world to find out that Joe Lieberman was his running mate.
Agreed, Kerry did exactly what he was told to do because he wasn’t smart enough to call the shots and he still screwed it up.
Actually, that “or” could also be an “and.” He is a trial lawyer so “plastic opportunist” is a critical success factor, not to mention redundant. Even pond scum has to have something to scrape off their shoes, thus Edwards still has a place in the ecosystem.
Darn it, you enticed me to click on a Time.com link and sure enough, there was a barf alert waiting there for me. Even though Shrum is telling us inside scoop about those loathsome creatures Kerry and Edwards, he can’t hide his RAT roots. Hey, Bob, no one “smeared” Kerry when it came to his ‘Nam service; truth is not a smear and the SBVfT were as honorable a bunch of men as was ever assembled on the face of the planet.
I said he’s a better man than either Kerry or Shrum— that’s a pretty low hurdle, don’t you think?
He’s running way too the left because thats what you have to do to win the Democratic nomination. Joe Lieberman was the most moderate Democrat in the Senate and the 2000 VP nomine, and he got creamed in the 2004 primaries— if you’re not a lefty you don’t have a shot in the Donkey primary.
The Democratic nomination is going to come down to Edwards or Hillary (Obama is going to fade in the home stretch, he’s too green at running a national campaign). If this immigration bill goes through, Bush will have handed the White House to whoever the Democrats nominate. And I’d prefer literally anyone (Rosie O’Donnell, that idiot lawyer in Atlanta with TB, etc.) in the White House for the next four years over the Clintons.
I don’t think Edwards is any more liberal than Hillary is (he just panders better) but he’s clearly less prone to corruption. He made his money legally (in both senses of the word), not from trading cattle futures.
Actually, it’s a classic con man’s routine: offering a slightly disturbing detail so the person thinks, “if he were lying he never would have said that.”
Edwards is a master of the slightly disturbing, but his use of it is far more than slightly disturbing. As an ambulance chased, Edwards “specialty” was convincing women to sue by claiming to channel their dead babies’ souls, saying their dead babies are insisting on justice.
That is creepy on so many levels: the manipulation of women’s grief, the assertion that deceased souls are preoccupied with earthly (rather than heavenly) justice, the use of black arts, but most especially: Edwards is pro-abortion.
Hmmm... Now I know why Bush kept saying all those liberals he put in charge of the domestic cabinet departments were “fabulous.” He meant “fabulist.”
In general your sentiments are on target but the concept of corruption may need some broadening.
Exactly how much more corruption is needed when one sells his soul? In that context, Edwards would seem to be going deeper into the pit. Hillary as we well know is the caretaker and has a senior administrative role in running that location in hell.
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