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Get Four
|  | JULY 6, 2004
By Lee Walczak John Edwards and Kerry's Will to Win Forget the usual Veep calculus. Naming the charming Southerner is meant to give the somnolent Bay State liberal the buzz he needs The guessing game is over -- it's Kerry-Edwards. And for the moment, it looks like a Democratic match made in realpolitikal heaven. John Kerry has ended the arduous process of picking a running mate by tapping North Carolina Senator John Edwards as his partner on the Democratic ticket -- and most Dems are delirious over the pairing of a starchy New Englander with sizzling Dixie flash. So what does this choice tell us about Kerry, the man who would be President? Beware of over-analysis by pols and pundits. The real check list goes like this: 1) He wants to win, 2) he wants to win, 3) he wants to win. While it's true that Edwards brings youth, dynamism, and regional diversity to the ticket, this marriage isn't really about any of the usual touchstones political analysts like to yak about. It's about creating buzz around a ticket headed by a somnolent Massachusetts liberal. PAEAN TO IDEALISM. It also underscores Democrats' dominant political impulse this year: Do whatever it takes to send George W. Bush packing, whether that means considering a pro-life, pro-tax-cut Republican maverick like Arizona Senator John McCain or rolling the dice on an untested political newcomer like Edwards, whose Cheshire smile masks a limited knowledge of policy. Indeed, Edwards probably won't bring Kerry a single Southern or border state, since the Carolinas have been trending heavily Republican in Presidential elections. No particular ideological melding is evident in the choice, either. Both men are in the mainstream of Senate Democratic liberalism, with the sole exception of trade policy. Edwards is a gut-level protectionist and talks like one. Kerry is more of a situational protectionist pushed into that stance by Edwards' thrusts during the Democratic primaries. If elected President, Kerry will probably add a slightly tougher edge to U.S. trade policy without making radical departures from his devotion to open markets. NEW LYRICS. Much has been made about Edwards' mesmerizing stump speech, an emotional appeal to push the underclass into the economic mainstream by ending the shame of "two Americas." It's a fabulous paean to idealism, all right. And with certain constituencies such as black Democrats, Edwards' oratory will continue to resonate now that he's on the ticket. However, with Kerry operatives at the controls, Edwards will be singing music written by others. He'll have to get in sync with the presumptive nominee's principal focus on middle-class workers. (What's "middle class" to Kerry? Principally, those with an adjusted gross income up to $200,000 annually -- a level many times higher than the statistical definition warrants. Folks above that income level are deemed fat cats and must cough up their tax cuts.) Naturally, Republicans have wasted no time swinging into the attack, skewering the Kerry-Edwards pairing as pro-tax hike, antibusiness, out of the mainstream on social issues, and beholden to ambulance-chasing trial lawyers. But the fact is, the trial-lawyers shtick rarely tars a foe outside of appealing to core GOP groups such as small-business owners. FINISH WITH A FLOURISH. Furthermore, for better or for worse, nouvelle protectionism is a potential key to the Rust Belt battlegrounds that will determine the election outcome. And the ultraliberal label that Republicans have stamped on Kerry has never quite stuck to Edwards -- the son of a mill laborer who worked his way through college and law school. Republicans will bay through Election Day, but in reality, Kerry's decision to name Edwards was the worst possible outcome for the GOP from a strategic standpoint. Privately, Republican pols were rooting for Missouri Representative Dick Gephardt, a shopworn Big Labor liberal, to make the final cut, or for Kerry to take the plunge on a little known Midwesterner such as Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack. No such luck. Although Kerry began his quest for a Vice-President in shaky fashion, by making ill-advised entreaties to McCain, he has ended it with a flourish. Yes, he picked a Democrat for whom he has no particular personal affinity and who obviously doesn't pass the "ready from Day One to step in and be President test." Still, the Edwards choice just might add the spark that the ever-pragmatic Kerry needs to get over the finish line, and that's the big goal that's never far from his mind these days.  Walczak is BusinessWeek's Washington bureau chief
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