Originally published in the Valley News on December 21, 2007
Edwards Learns His Lessons
Edwards also has said he would raise the capital gains tax from 15 percent to 28 percent for those making more than $250,000 a year.
Asked what he learned from his 2004 run for the White House, Edwards said winning candidates have to be "clear and bold" in their proposals.
"I think they want to hear specifics, and they want to hear bold ideas. They know that small change is not enough. We need bold change in this country," he said.
Some voters have noticed the difference. Brad Moses, a Grantham Democrat leaning toward Edwards, said he supports the candidate's clear policies on health care and foreign policy.
"I think he's evolved quite a lot. He's become much more specific about things he wishes to do," Moses, a retired advertising executive, said before a Lebanon campaign appearance by Edwards on Tuesday. "Other people, Hillary and so forth, to me anyway, are still not telling us how they are going to accomplish anything."
The Iraq Vote
Edwards' transformation has been most visible in his stance on the war in Iraq.
Back on Sept. 12, 2002, Edwards, then a first-term senator from North Carolina, stood on the Senate floor and made a forceful case for the United States to lead an international effort to oust Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.
"I believe that Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime represents a clear threat to the United States, to our allies, to our interests around the world, and to the values of freedom and democracy we hold dear," said Edwards, who then served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
"The time has come for decisive action," Edwards said moments later. "With our allies, we must do whatever is necessary to guard against the threat posed by an Iraq armed with weapons of mass destruction, and under the thumb of Saddam Hussein."
Four years ago, when he was first running for president, Edwards voted against $87 billion for reconstruction efforts, saying he would not give the Bush administration a "blank check" in Iraq, but he stopped well short of saying he regretted voting for, and in fact co-sponsoring, the measure that authorized the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
As he prepared for his 2008 presidential campaign, Edwards repudiated his 2002 vote in support of the Iraq war, and repeatedly has argued that learning from the mistake makes him a stronger candidate.
"I voted for the war and shouldn't have voted for it, and it was my responsibility to have voted for it, not anybody else's," Edwards said last month at the Valley News. "We've never had a president who wasn't human. Every single person running is going to make mistakes. ... the question is will you recognize it, are you willing to be honest about it, and are you willing to change course when it happens?"
Lent, the Vermont writer who has followed Edwards' career but is so far undecided in the primary race, said the former senator deserves credit for stepping back and adjusting course, just as he did 20 years ago in the personal-injury trial.
"He wasn't changing his mind about the viability of the trial, he was trying to learn more and realizing that to meet his goals he had to reconsider his message, which I think is an admirable trait, and also shows a fairly agile intelligence, to be able to put ego aside enough to do that, which I sort of see in his newer stance on the war," Lent said.
Politics or Passion?
But was Edwards' new stance on Iraq a genuine evolution, or simply a politically astute maneuver to reach out to Democrats angry about the war?
A recent New York Times article suggested that during the 2004 campaign, Edwards had argued against having Kerry renounce his own 2002 vote authorizing the Iraq invasion.
"I don't talk about my conversations with John Kerry. They were private to the two of us," Edwards said after the Claremont event. "What I said to him then was 'say what you believe, and stand behind what you believe.' "