Sunday, May 21, 2006
John Edwards and the Democrats' plague of lawyers
John Edwards did his star turn on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," reminding us that he lost an election to "the worst president in our lifetime." I suppose it is necessary for him to declare this -- announcing that Bush is the "worst president ever" or over some shorter period seems to be a litmus test among Democratic contributors. Other than that benefit, though, it is hard to see how it is in Edwards' interest to proclaim this, since it is tantamount to calling the voters who elevated Bush and Cheney over Kerry and Edwards stupid.
The truth is, Bush has rarely looked like a strong president in the abstract. You have to put a Democratic nominee next to him for people to realize that there can be worse things.
Regular readers know that I think that the Democrats suffer from the too-heavy influence of lawyers. Lawyers have many strengths, and they make excellent legislators. However, they make much worse executives because they tend to suffer from at least three professional deficiencies that they have to overcome in order to be successful. First, they are trained in analysis and argument, not leadership. Lawyers are naturally lone wolves, and often do not understand in their gut how to motivate organizations to do what they want.
Second, they are experts in procedure and therefore tend to think in procedural terms, rather than by objective. The lawyer's fetish for procedure crops up in all sorts of situations, but it positively haunted the Clinton administration's efforts to deal with the rising threat of al Qaeda. Clinton quite famously missed at least one opportunity -- some say three -- to get his hands on Osama bin Laden, but passed because he was worried that we could not get a conviction on a U.S. offense in front of a federal jury. The controversy surrounding the Bush administration's relative disregard for procedural niceties may cause some people to think that Clinton's approach was not all bad, but most Americans would rather hear that hundreds of random Saudis and Afghanis are in secret prisons than think we would let a terror master go because we can't prove up the case.
Third, lawyers tend to argue in the alternative. This is permissible in litigation and law school -- "I wasn't in Kansas City when he was murdered, and if I was it was self-defense" -- but it is alien to, er, normal people. See, for example, John Edwards strange argument in defense of his sleezy "Mary Cheney" comment during the 2004 vice presidential debate:
The former senator, pitching his "college for everyone" program in rural North Carolina, also responded to recent criticism by Mary Cheney, Vice President Cheney's lesbian daughter. In "Now It's My Turn: A Daughter's Chronicle of Political Life", Cheney, the 37-year-old second daughter of the vice president and second lady, labeled Edwards as "complete and total slime" for congratulating Cheney and his wife during their 2004 vice presidential debate for "embrac[ing]" their daughter's sexual orientation.
Edwards did not back down, telling Stephanopoulous, ABC News' chief Washington correspondent, "I think what I said then was appropriate. And I do believe that it was in a very partisan political environment. We were in the middle of a very hot campaign, very close campaign."
So, was it "appropriate" in the abstract for Edwards to leverage Mary Cheney's sexual orientation against Cheney's social conservative base, or was it merely excusable because it was expedient? It seems to me that these are two entirely different arguments that reflect quite differently on the person making them (although neither reflection is particularly appealing).
John Edwards, like many lawyers, thinks that Americans are easily fooled. He thinks that they were duped when they elected Bush and Cheney, and he thinks that they do not know the difference between his two excuses for his reprehensible behavior during the vice presidential debate. George Bush may well be the worst president in a long time -- although I refuse to concede that he is worse than Jimmy Carter -- but he is a great and fearless leader when standing next to John Edwards.
7 Comments:
By 
Lanky_Bastard, at
Mon May 22, 12:09:00 AM:
"George Bush may well be the worst president in a long time-"
Is this another example of a lawyer arguing in the abstract, or is the idea actually under consideration?
PS: It is simply inappropriate to use opponents' children against them. Wives on the other hand, are...wait for it...FAIR GAME!
By 
, at
Mon May 22, 02:25:00 AM:
I think calling Edward's comment about Mary Cheney "sleazy" is an exageration. VP Cheney brought up his daughter first. That made it fair game, in my view, for Edwards to use her also. I'd wouldn't even call the usage inapproriate. Just because the daughter doesn't appreciate the way her genetics pose a potential political handicap to her father doesn't make Edwards sleazy. And even if it was, reciprocity is key here. I recall something about McCain's black love-child coming out of a Bush-Cheney call center. What goes around comes around.
By , at
Mon May 22, 09:20:00 AM:
Edwards is short and simple, a scumbag slip-and-fall 1-800 lawyer. The fact that he combines it with politics just makes him that much less credible and untrustworthy.
His kid attends school with mine, and everytime I see him, I get the sense of a plastic barbie doll. His project teaching poverty at UNC while building a mansion on 100 acres is laughable, and his idea that every goes to college misses the point that if we just taught kids what they needed to know in High School, many who aren't college material or desire it wouldn't need it to get a good job.
What amazes me more and more is that you can rise to national level in politics by force of money and marketing. Up close and personal, you wouldn't trust these clowns to deliver a package for fear they'd clip a trinket on the way out. This guys no exception to that rule.
By cakreiz, at
Mon May 22, 05:00:00 PM:
Agree 100% with your analysis, TH. Also, attorney non-decision is part of the nature of what we do. Most decisions are made by clients, not lawyers. Lawyers supply the benefit-risk analysis. We're great at conjuring up every risk imaginable (real, surreal, extra terrestrial). After full disclosure, it's up to the client to make a decision. It's very easy to become comfortable with this handwashing process because ultimate decision-making lies with someone else.
I agree that the Clinton Administration exhibited the tendency of indecision. Conversely, businessmen seem much more accustomed to making decisions.
By TigerHawk, at
Mon May 22, 11:22:00 PM:
On the Sudan matter, it is true that the Clinton administration has denied receiving an offer "from Sudan," and the 911 Commission found no evidence to overturn that denial. The allegation has come from a number of sources, however, not simply the Sudanese officials who claim to have made the overture (as lefty Media Matters asserts). See, for instance, this fairly persuasive op-ed piece from the Los Angeles Times. It seems rather fact-laden to me, from somebody with no obvious reason to discredit Clinton. Of course, that does not make it true, but the story certainly has the ring of truth to it.
Obviously, any number of other people have made the same assertion, with varying credibility. I am in a hotel room in Mexico City, so I don't remember what Steve Coll wrote in Ghost Wars. If anybody has that handy, it might go a long way to settling this one.
By Dawnfire82, at
Tue May 23, 12:59:00 AM:
I think that Sudan actually offered him to us via Saudi, in an indirect way. That is, they offered him up to the Saudis (whom he was actively trying to overthrow) with the foreknowledge that Saudi would probably hand him off to us if asked. And of course the Clinton admin would deny this; it makes them look terrible. This overlooks the Afghani hit squad that was denied authorization to attack OBL because of Clinton's spinelessness. (Ref: Inside Al Qaeda, I think...)
"Well, to be fair, look at the polls. It would seem like most Americans are coming to believe they were duped when they elected Bush and Cheney."
Just because you don't agree with leadership doesn't mean that you have to think that they somehow lied to you. The biggest hit against the President in the polls lately has been the immigration thing; that's when his base started to desert him. Even Texas is turning against him because of that.
Meh. Carter gave away the Panama canal, fumbled the Iranian situation, and played easy with the Soviets. I think he was just too nice to be President.
President Bush knows exactly where he wants to go (with Iraq) and had an idea of how to get there. Unfortunately, his idea was incorrect and 'play by ear' became the rule of the day. Really, things could be a whole lot worse.
And something in the OP that irks me... "the worst president in our lifetime." What is he, 12? Lyndon Johnson, who escalated Vietnam based on a deception and then refused to win, essentially sacrificing thousands of American lives for nothing, not to mention voter fraud to get him elected in the Senate. Richard Nixon who, despite his foreign policy contributions, left a permanent scar on the political landscape and introduced the era of wolfpack journalism thanks to his antics. Carter has already been mentioned.
Stupid BS political posturing... and to think I used to like him.
By Dawnfire82, at
Tue May 23, 08:55:00 PM:
"As for the Panama Canal, it was time to schedule a turnover. You just can't keep your old colonial posessions forver. The Europeans were abonding theirs, we had to do the same."
False! We still own Guam, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Guantanamo, et cetera. The British, French, and Dutch still maintain overseas holdings in this place or that. And the Panama Canal was much more strategically important than, say, the Virgin Islands. I wasn't around at the time to remember the process, but in retrospect it was a strategic mistake of the first order. There's a reason that the British fought over the Suez Canal so often.
