Investor's Business Daily, July 10th, 2007
Campaign '08: Presidential candidate John Edwards is set to begin his poverty tour. But he might have more credibility on the issue if he took a poverty vow instead.
A week after rock stars and miscellaneous other narcissists hectored the world about global warming, the Democrat from North Carolina is going to nag America about its supposed poverty problem. Is there no end to the hypocrisy of the left?
The "Road to One America" tour will begin Sunday and cover 12 cities in eight states over three days. It's billed as part of Edwards' grand plan to end "poverty in America within a generation." It's more likely an effort to carve an image of Edwards as a caring soul.
Politico.com reports that the candidate will visit coal country, a factory, a farm, a struggling neighborhood and a health care clinic -- all in places where the wealthy former trial lawyer has likely never been or would ever trod if it not for his political ambition.
Edwards can try to clothe himself as a populist who really cares about the poor, but the hayseed suit will never fit. Not as long as:
He lives in a 10,778-square-foot home near Chapel Hill, N.C., that has 15,600 square feet of outbuildings housing a gym, pool, racquetball court, two stages, a four-story tower and a room for his lounge.
He treats neighbors with elitist scorn, like the one who had to explain, "I have to live within my means," after Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, complained that his property was "slummy."
He gets $500 haircuts from stylists such as Beverly Hills' Joseph Torrenueva, who is flown in to service Edwards wherever he's on the road campaigning.
A video of him primping and preening and fussing over his hair prior to a television appearance like a 10th-grade girl before her first date is still available over the Internet.
Of all the issues that Edwards could have chosen to make his mark, he goes with the one where there's no plausible link. His net worth is at least $30 million. What does he know about being poor?
There's something disturbingly disingenuous about wealthy people who so publicly take up causes for the poor.
Edwards never misses a chance to note that his father worked in the mills "all his life."
But he conveniently leaves out a fact unearthed by L.A. Weekly -- that his father was not a lifelong mill hand barely scraping by, but an ambitious man who climbed the ranks to become a self-employed consultant in the textile industry.
But don't expect Edwards to stop playing the role of the poor-boy-done-good now dedicated to looking after the unfortunate.
He needs votes, and as we're sure to see on the "Road to One America," he knows that playing on the public's emotions, facts be damned, is a sure way to get them.
