Events on the ground in Iraq will decide whether the war is a plus or minus for President George W. Bush. Foreign policy isn’t like domestic policy; Bush can’t spin his way out of a disaster in Iraq–not with U.S. casualties giving the lie to the rosy victory speeches.
John Edwards lacks experience, but that isn’t what Kerry was looking for. “Kerry doesn’t need ballast; he needs helium,” says a Democratic Senate aide. “More ballast and he’d sink.”
Edwards would not have been successful at the top of the ticket in a post-9/11 world, but Kerry needs someone to make the campaign more fun. The job description of a vice president in the modern age is not simply to be on hand if the president dies; it’s to communicate the president’s message.
Seeing Edwards out there is a reminder of why he won a lot of votes in the primaries, and why Republicans have feared the smooth-talking lawyer ever since he won his Senate seat in North Carolina six years ago.The GOP reserves a special place in hell for trial attorneys who champion the little guy at the expense of the big corporations and get wealthy in the process. Edwards’s speech on the “Two Americas” is populism with a smile. He’s the rare Democrat whose class-warfare rhetoric wins the approval of the Democratic Leadership Council, the party’s moderate wing, while still energizing the party’s base of liberals.
The Senate by coincidence this week debated legislation to limit civil-action suits, which is how Edwards got rich. It’s one of the classic battles between the political parties, pitting the evil plutocrats in the corporate world against personal-injury attorneys, dubbed “ambulance chasers” by their detractors. The issue is more complicated than the GOP portrayals of greedy lawyers bringing frivolous lawsuits, which is why it’s unlikely to hurt Edwards. People don’t like lawyers carting away huge fees, but most people can identify with the people who are suing. There’s a reason why Court TV is so popular; the stories are poignant.
Anybody who has read a John Grisham novel knows that trial lawyers are often the only recourse ordinary people have in much of the country to right corporate wrongs. With the diminished power of the labor movement, no other institution serves as a counterpoint to corporate power. Attorneys get rich, yes, but Republicans don’t begrudge it when businessmen get rich. What Republicans hate about trial lawyers is that they give money to Democrats, lots of it. Tort reform worked for Bush in Texas, and the GOP-controlled Congress periodically brings up the issue as a sop to its business constituency. “This is base time,” says a Republican Senate staffer. Next week the Senate debates a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, which won’t pass.
The bill to limit class-action law suits didn’t last through the week. New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, the de facto top cop on corporate accountability, weighed in along with a dozen other state A.G.s to oppose the legislation as a threat to consumer rights. The so-called Class Action Fairness Act would prevent class-action suits in state courts against out-of-state manufacturers. Getting a case certified for federal court is very difficult, and the practical result would be to greatly reduce the number of lawsuits. For example, a class-action case last year against Philip Morris USA in Illinois for consumer fraud brought by smokers in the state would not have gone forward if this bill had been law because the company is not based in Illinois. That case resulted in a $7 billion judgment, the amount Philip Morris made over 30 years of misleading Illinois smokers into believing Marlboro Lites contained less tar and nicotine when in fact they were actually more lethal.
Senate Democrats helped kill the class-action bill by proposing to add amendments to raise the minimum wage, legalize drug re-importation and extend unemployment benefits. Not wanting to give Democrats a forum on these popular issues, Majority Leader Bill Frist used a legislative maneuver to deny the offending amendments. Frist’s heavy-handedness angered lawmakers, even those who support the bill. Among them was Sen. John McCain who, together with Sen. Joe Lieberman, planned to introduce an amendment on global climate change, one of Bush’s least-favorite subjects. It was a reminder that McCain’s allegiance is still up for grabs. He may have endorsed Bush, but he regards Kerry and Edwards as friends, and the Arizona Republican says he will not criticize either one during this campaign.
On the jacket of Edwards’s memoir, “Four Trials,” McCain says Edwards “has written movingly of people who were terribly wronged, and whom he helped seek some measure of justice with great skill, determination, and genuine compassion …John reveals the strength of his own character and gives the reader a look beyond a political biography into the heart of a good man.”
In a week when Enron’s Kenneth Lay was brought into a Houston court in handcuffs, Kerry’s choice of Edwards seemed prescient. When you ask people what they’re concerned about, it’s not frivolous lawsuits. It’s health care and jobs and college tuition, issues that don’t take a lot of Washington experience to understand.
