Before Edwards’s strong second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, his honeyed, keep-it-positive approach was considered wildly out of sync with party regulars in a particularly angry time. Eventually, though, Democrats there validated his argument that in essentially optimistic America, mad as hell does not wear well–outrage being cathartic, sure, but as a lifestyle it’s just too exhausting. All along, his mantra has been that Democrats can’t win on Bush-bashing alone, but with a vision of an essentially fairer America in which presidential pals don’t get no-bid contracts, contributors don’t write legislation, elections are publicly financed and women are paid equitably. The emotional high point of his stump speech is actually a paean to… affirmative action, hardly a pander in mostly white New Hampshire.
His now widely co-opted optimism has unquestionably changed the race, with rivals suddenly competing to show they can be uplifting, too. But what Edwards himself still has to show is that he can contend in the top tier without compromising the nice-guy qualities that got him there. (Already this week, the urge for an “Edwards Goes Negative” narrative was so acute that reports of an internal Edwards campaign memo characterizing Dean as an “elitist raised on Park Avenue” and Kerry as a Washington insider actually made news.)
The senator laughs, however, at the idea that any trial lawyer worth his Brioni suit might not know how to counterattack with composure. “Respond, be strong, move on–I’ve been doing it most of my life,” he says, drawling an extra beat, with just the implication of a suppressed yawn to underscore what a no-brainer this is. “Other lawyers would attack me in the courtroom and it wouldn’t work. If they said something untrue, I’d say why it was untrue and move on. Or if they said something that was right, I’d just say, ‘That’s true,’ and move on.” Which does seem to be his M.O. Not far into my first conversation with the candidate, it occurred to me that I may never have interviewed anyone with such firm boundaries; he instinctively knows exactly how far he wants to go and goes not an inch further, but all the while, through any number of little pokes and prods, remains perfectly pleasant. And stays always within the medium range of revelation that is so much trickier than telling either a lot or a very little.
Friends say this confidence, too, comes from lessons learned in Carolina courtrooms. And though the candidate may look like the high-school boyfriend your mother liked so much, this is, after all, a man who made his fortune breaking bones with a smile. When the jury was home asleep, Edwards was not always Sheriff Andy, according to his former legal adversary Sammy Thompson: “In the middle of a trial, he came to my hotel room at night with a letter personally vowing that if he got a verdict in excess of the amount that this doctor’s insurance company would cover, he was going after the man’s personal assets,” Thompson says, still aggrieved. “He was just trying to intimidate him into settling. That was hardball.”
Only five years into his political career, the campaign he’s running is not so loosely based on that experience as a demon trial lawyer. And his No. 1 rule, then and now: never underestimate the jury. When he works a crowd, he refrains from strangling likely voters with love, and seems respectful of their personal space in a way that is a little on the subtle side for a presidential candidate. After meeting him, people talk about eye contact instead of bear hugs. In New Hampshire, of course, he’s still the underdog, en route to the Feb. 3 primary on his home turf in South Carolina, where he was born. But the reaction of crowds even in New Hampshire, just as in Iowa, suggests that his ability to connect with voters may still be underrated. In a VFW hall in Portsmouth last week, so many people were turned away that the senator ended up addressing the overflow crowd in a basement bar before trotting up to the main event. “There’s something about him that really resonates,” concluded Adrienne Smith, a 58-year-old Dartmouth student. “I believe him when he says he wants to do something about” the inequities rending America. Her husband, Thomas Smith, 65, was equally impressed. “This is Bill Clinton with character,” he said. “You can certainly see how he would persuade a jury.”
Edwards’s life story is central to his message: he’s the up-from-nothing son of a mill worker (with good hair!) who made millions as an advocate for injured kids. After the death of his 16-year-old son Wade in a freak highway accident in 1996, he ran for the Senate in North Carolina, and out of nowhere again actually won the thing, unseating Republican Lauch Faircloth. Soon after arriving in Washington, Edwards was asked to help argue the case against impeaching Clinton, and before long he was also a major player on issues including campaign-finance reform and the patient’s bill of rights. In 2000 he nearly became Al Gore’s running mate, and at that point “started to see himself as others see him,” says his wife, Elizabeth. As presidential. Yet, as the first in his family to attend college, he remained unburdened by the pressures inside political clans like the Bushes and the Gores.
Has he perhaps overreached, however, by forfeiting a Senate seat just five years into his first term to make a presidential run? In a joint interview in their campaign van, he and Elizabeth, who met in law school, took turns batting that one down. “A lot of people who’ve run for president have thought, ‘OK, I’ve checked this box and that one and now it’s my turn’–but it’s never been my turn to do anything!” he said. “It wasn’t my turn to go to college. It wasn’t my turn to go to law school. It certainly wasn’t my turn to run for the Senate!” Elizabeth added that it would indeed have made more sense to wait before making this race–“if the reason he’s running is to check off the next box. But he’s running for what he can offer” now, because four years from now “may be too late.” When she paused for a millisecond, he finished the thought, and when she protested, he shot back, “You took a breath! It’s the only way I get to talk!”
After I mentioned their son Wade, however, neither of them said a single word. And though their decision not to talk about him in the campaign is questioned privately by some aides, Edwards doesn’t need to do that to put his humanity across. Asked if he’s in a bigger hurry as a result of his loss, his jaw tightened, but his tone changed not at all. “Yeah,” he said, “but the truth is if you look at my whole life, everything has been a surprise.”
Maybe when the best and the worst that could happen to you already have, there isn’t much left to worry about? “When you don’t have others who have gone in front of you, sometimes for generations,” he says, “everything seems both possible and impossible, if you understand what I mean. For me, everything I’ve done has been difficult. And everything has been possible.” So what will Edwards do if he loses the long-shot, all-or-nothing gamble of this campaign? “I don’t know how many people have asked me that,” says his friend Rich Leonard, a federal judge in North Carolina. “And I say not only don’t I know, but I guarantee you he hasn’t spent one minute thinking about it.”
