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Mark Shields is a nationally known columnist and commentator. |
John Edwards: Favorite of the press bus?
WASHINGTON (Creators Syndicate) -- Like nearly every human being I have ever met, those of us who cover politics are not objective. However, the great majority of political journalists I have known do strive to be fair.
Still, it is true that in the presidential campaigns since 1968 of which I have some personal knowledge, those on the press bus generally do "fall" for one candidate who is too candid for his own good, has a good sense of humor, including the ability to laugh at himself, and is the long-shot David against the deep-pockets and favorite Goliath.
In his superb new book,"Fat Man Fed Up," Jack Germond -- one of the best political reporters who ever closed the bar at the Sheraton Wayfarer on the eve of a New Hampshire primary -- admits to personally preferring Stevenson to JFK in 1960, Nelson Rockefeller over either Barry Goldwater or Richard Nixon, and Howard Baker in 1980 over Ronald Reagan.
Germond speaks for many of us when he writes his preferences were "based not on particular issues so much as on the personal qualities of the individuals. I thought, for example, that the country would have done well to have someone in the White House with (Mo) Udall's self-deprecating wit and sense of the ridiculous to keep things in some relationship to reality."
Arizona Rep. Morris K. Udall was a gentle giant with steel in his soul and a 1976 presidential candidate without an ounce of pomposity.
Nobody laughed louder than Mo when he told of introducing himself in a Concord (or Portsmouth or Hanover) New Hampshire barbershop: " Hi, I'm Mo Udall. I'm running for president," to which the barber responded, "Yup, we were just laughing about that."
After repeatedly running a close second in primary after primary to Jimmy Carter, Udall could quip: "The people have spoken ... the bastards."
Former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt was a 1988 press favorite. He won admiration for his candor in refusing to pander to voters about painless, bogus answers to the burgeoning federal deficits.
At an Iowa party dinner, he mocked his own lack of name recognition by announcing that this running for president was so exhilarating that at the pre-dinner reception he had actually signed 12 autographs. Then holding up several pieces of folded paper he fished out of his coat pocket, he revealed: "I still have 10 of them here."
In 2000, the overwhelming favorite on the press bus was another man from the Grand Canyon State who put the candid back in candidate, Sen. John McCain. Confession is not only good for the soul, for a presidential candidate, confession is a powerful political asset.
While stories were written about George W. Bush's unimpressive Yale transcript, McCain avoided similar coverage by having cheerfully volunteered that he finished fifth from the bottom in his Annapolis class.
A best-selling author, McCain astounded the cynical press corps by giving equal billing, royalties and credit to his co-author and friend, Mark Salter, his Senate chief of staff.
As his own campaign sputtered, he reminded audiences of the earlier failed efforts of Goldwater, Udall and Babbitt, and concluded that "Arizona is the only state where a mother does not tell her son he can grow up to be president."
North Carolina senator and presumed vice presidential nominee John Edwards, who did get a lot of favorable coverage, was never a press bus favorite in the same category with Udall or McCain.
Boosted by his personal underdog history, he did win positive reviews for his manifest ability to connect personally with audiences everywhere. Shallow critics have wrongly dismissed his "Two Americas" speech as some strain of Southern-fried populism.
Edwards' message is much more. It is rooted in the reality of the epidemic of failed and corrupted American institutions: From the Red Cross and United Way mismanaging both peoples' money and their blood to The New York Times' confessing that its news stories were fabrications; from respected stock brokerages urging trusting clients to buy stocks the firms' own analysts openly ridiculed to the fixing of the Salt Lake City Olympics; from the hierarchy of the Catholic Church failing to protect children from sexual abuse by pederast priests to accounting giants cooking the books to please big customers, to Global Crossing, Tyco, WorldCom, Adelphia cable and Enron.
What all the foregoing offenders have in common -- as John Edwards expresses so well -- is that the privileged and powerful do not live by the same rules or answer to the same laws that the rest of America lives by.
And that is unacceptable -- both on the press bus and in the polling place.
