Thursday, July 08, 2004
I have one word for the GOP charge that John Edwards lacks experience: Bullshit.
It shows how far we've come from 2000 when a 5.5 year governor of Texas ran for president. This governor momentarily thought that the Taliban was a rock band. He also had a hard time naming the president of Pakistan and was briefly cheered by the news that Canadian Prime Minister Jean Poutine had endorsed him. Dubya could perhaps be forgiven for not realizing that a poutine is a favored Quebecois snack, but not for missing the fact that: a.)the Canadian Prime Minister at the time was Jean Chretien, and b.) Sane heads of government do not make endorsements in other countries' elections. Bush did not run on foreign policy. He could not run on foreign policy. He was visibly out of it when the topic came up. He was still out of it when he undermined Kim Dae Jung during the Nobel Prize winner's visit the following spring.
I would wager that John Edwards is incapable of making any of the above mistakes. Unlike Bush, he did not just spend the last 5.5 years lazing around a governor's mansion while his lieutenant governor did the work of governing (Texas actually vests most authority on the lieutenant governor). He was in the Senate - dealing with a range of issues. He served on the Intelligence Committee. He's been overseas quite a bit in the past few years: to Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia. The John Edwards of 2004 could blow the Bush of 2000 out of the water on foreign affairs. Heck, the John Edwards of 2000 could humiliate the Bush of 2000 on this topic. So it's a little rich when the GOP starts pretending that they care about the experience level of a candidate. The Republican establishment slammed aside their most experienced contender in 2000 (a certain Arizonan) in favor of a Texan with the right last name. Remember this when the Republicans and their placid media myrmidons repeat this nonsense. They're scared of Edwards and they have every reason to be. Consistency and coherence, in such circumstances, tend to fly out the window.
It shows how far we've come from 2000 when a 5.5 year governor of Texas ran for president. This governor momentarily thought that the Taliban was a rock band. He also had a hard time naming the president of Pakistan and was briefly cheered by the news that Canadian Prime Minister Jean Poutine had endorsed him. Dubya could perhaps be forgiven for not realizing that a poutine is a favored Quebecois snack, but not for missing the fact that: a.)the Canadian Prime Minister at the time was Jean Chretien, and b.) Sane heads of government do not make endorsements in other countries' elections. Bush did not run on foreign policy. He could not run on foreign policy. He was visibly out of it when the topic came up. He was still out of it when he undermined Kim Dae Jung during the Nobel Prize winner's visit the following spring.
I would wager that John Edwards is incapable of making any of the above mistakes. Unlike Bush, he did not just spend the last 5.5 years lazing around a governor's mansion while his lieutenant governor did the work of governing (Texas actually vests most authority on the lieutenant governor). He was in the Senate - dealing with a range of issues. He served on the Intelligence Committee. He's been overseas quite a bit in the past few years: to Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia. The John Edwards of 2004 could blow the Bush of 2000 out of the water on foreign affairs. Heck, the John Edwards of 2000 could humiliate the Bush of 2000 on this topic. So it's a little rich when the GOP starts pretending that they care about the experience level of a candidate. The Republican establishment slammed aside their most experienced contender in 2000 (a certain Arizonan) in favor of a Texan with the right last name. Remember this when the Republicans and their placid media myrmidons repeat this nonsense. They're scared of Edwards and they have every reason to be. Consistency and coherence, in such circumstances, tend to fly out the window.
