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This is a decision I came to only recently, and that's because it's still early in the cycle, we're still more than a year away from the next election, and more importantly, because there are so many good candidates running for President on the Democratic ticket. In addition to that, I think that the next president is going to have to be someone who has incredible skill and experience, our country can afford no less. This next president, whether he or she be Republican or Democrat, will have to spend most if not all of their first term undoing all of the damage that was done by the Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld administration. If they are lucky, they'll be able to do something else with their second term should they get one.
Post 9-11 the United States of America has looked weak. The world's oldest modern Democracy, the wealthiest nation in history, the country where millions fled poverty, racism, and religious persecution to flourish and build a super power, has seemed weakened and beaten down. Our nation, the nation that put a man on the moon, saved the world from Hitler, invented the computer, the telephone, and coca-cola, a country that despite our not so glowing past with respect to women and minorities, has never had a king or a dictator, and is a place where millions still come from every corner of the earth in pursuit of our great American dream--has throughout the Bush years with it's handling of both international and domestic issues, appeared weak to the rest of the world--and this is tragic.
We look weak because we are bogged down in an unnecessary war we started on questionable information. We look weak because we were totally unequipped to deal with the aftermath of a hurricane which destroyed one of our major cities, because our schools are in decay, college tuition and healthcare costs are totally out of control, and our infrastructure is collapsing. I could go on and on, but in short, the US Army, the world's most elite fighting force is bogged down in Iraq, a major bridge in major US city just collapsed due to disrepair, and a hurricane's aftermath gives the rest of the world an up close look at the kind of desperate poverty millions of Americans live in.
As a result of this appearance of weakness, we have a rogue nation like Iran making threats against us, we have North Korea rebuilding it's nuclear arsenal, we have Russia clamping down on Democracy, and we have Communist China pointing hundreds of missiles toward a free and democratic Taiwan.
While DC young professionals working on the hill, or with political campaigns or consulting firms like I do, are sipping their $8 after work cocktails and chatting away in the city's numerous "hot spots" about America's future, only blocks from them, an estimated one out of two children will go to bed with nothing to eat that night. The nation's capital has a staggering poverty rate that is just about on par with that of a third world country--no exaggeration. Right in their midst these people exist, most of them African-American, living in extreme poverty and in miserable circumstances. On the metro, on the bus, at the grocery store, they are seemingly invisible to so many of these legions of young, upper-class Anglo Progressives, who claim to care about the struggle of the poor and working class, yet hardly seem to notice the poverty which surrounds them.
I think in order to restore this county to greatness, we must build from the ground up. We are rotting from the inside out, as it seems most everyone is so bogged down with providing for their families, paying their medical bills, and putting their children through college, they can no longer care for their neighborhoods and communities.
John Edwards is the candidate who understands this best. Unlike many people in Democratic politics, John Edwards understands what it's like not to able to afford the basic things you need to get by, and I think it's because of this personal experience of growing up without, that he, unlike many others has realized what an enormous problem we have with respect to our decreasing standard of living in this country.
Edwards was all but laughed at by many "leading" progressives a few years ago for bringing up the idea of the "two Americas", but for anyone who lives in DC (or Dallas for that matter) this statement should not be taken as a joke, since evidence of it exists literally everywhere they look. I grew up in rural West Texas in a town of about 6,000. I grew up in a place where no one was really "rich" and many were poor. Like Edwards, I was taught by my mother that part of being a Democrat, and voting for Democrats, was the belief that we should all work for something higher than ourselves, and that as a country, and a community, we should want everyone to be given the chance to live up to his or her full potential.
This morning Presidential Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin said on the "Meet the Press" that voters should look to history when selecting a Presidential candidate. When asked by Tim Russert which particular sets of characteristics she felt the most successful Presidents all had, the main one she pointed to was personal tragedy. She spoke of FDR's battle with polio, Teddy Roosevelt's loss of both his wife and his mother on the same day, of Kennedy loosing two of his siblings and struggling with frailty and physical illness throughout most of his childhood, and Lincoln, who had also suffered great personal loss. She said that what made these men so exceptional, is that when others would have given up because of these tragedies, they gained great strength from them. It reminded me of the old saying "That which does not kill us makes us stronger". I think Edwards, with the loss of his teenage son in a car accident, and enduring his wife's long struggle with cancer, has suffered much in way of personal tragedy, and this has made him a strong enough person to weather what storms may come when he is President.
Edwards had the courage to admit his vote for the Iraq war was a mistake, and I for one am tired of having a President who will not own up to ever having made a mistake, it really doesn't hold too much water with me to hear Sen. Obama talking at length about never having supported the war, when at the time of the vote to authorize force against Iraq Obama was a State Senator representing one of the most liberal districts in America, where he had nothing to lose and everything to gain by being anti-war, even at time when the majority of Americans supported the invasion (sadly).
I don't work for any Presidential campaign, I never have, and I think many of the other candidates would make great Presidents, but it's in Edwards commitment to making life better for everyone, that has convinced me he is the candidate I should support.
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