Blue skies: Their energy was infectious, but their numbers barely moved. Can Kerry-Edwards convert smiles into votes against Team Bush? Game on
Charles Ommanney / Contact for Newsweek
'Good pictures': The Kerry-Edwards ticket as a family affair
By Howard Fineman and Richard Wolffe
Newsweek
July 19 issue - The Kennedys loved to play football in odd places and so, naturally, does their political descendant, Sen. John F. Kerry. It was searingly hot on the airport tarmac in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., last week. Inside an air-conditioned conference room, Kerry and an aide were tossing a football when Sen. John Edwards arrived. In coats and ties, the newly minted running mates performed yet another bonding ritual, a typical blend of bonhomie and competition. Grinning, Kerry winged a pass across the table to Edwards, who caught it with the practiced, spread-fingered ease of the high-school player he once was. "Look at those soft hands!" Kerry exclaimed. "A good receiver." Edwards, grinning, too, passed the ball back, making Kerry reach a bit to make the catch. "I kind of led him a little bit too much," Edwards said, "but you knew he'd get it."
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Seated at the conference table for their first joint interview as Democratic ticket mates, the duo continued their cheerful, if still tentative, game, as the new No. 2 adjusted to his "receiver" role. When Edwards was asked for his views on nuclear proliferation, Kerry—with a polite but firm "Do you mind?"—stepped in to answer the question with an air of authority, leaving Edwards to fiddle impatiently with the football until it was his turn. But when the subject turned to values, it was Edwards who was more sure-footed and upbeat. While Kerry focused on rebutting each and every Bush administration accusation on abortion, gun control and taxes, Edwards smoothly alluded to his own milltown, blue-collar, rural roots and evoked the vision of a brighter future for all. "People are desperate to feel optimistic again," he said. "I know what they need. I know what they want ... They want someone who will lift them up again, in a real way, not rhetoric." Kerry couldn't have said it better—and didn't.
In the Sunshine State, the storied battleground of Election 2000 (and certain to be that again this year), the "John-John" ticket was campaigning as the Sunshine Boys, eager to paint the campaign as a Manichaean struggle between their light and the darkness of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, whom Democrats depict as the gloomy, disingenuous avatars of war abroad and economic inequality at home. To the chagrin of some of his aides, Bush took the unusual step of attacking the other guy's veep pick, implying that Edwards was unprepared for the job. Later, Bush accused Edwards of being a closet pessimist, "whether the message is delivered with a smile or a frown." But with some Republicans suggesting that Cheney is a drag on the GOP ticket—the new NEWSWEEK Poll provides ample ammunition for that view—Democrats saw the veep matchup as a Future versus Past winner. "It's a great contrast for us," said Kerry adviser Tad Devine.
The contrast is intentional. Concluding four months of deeply secret deliberations, Kerry came close to picking 67-year-old Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, the ranking Democrat and former chairman of the Senate intelligence committee. Other finalists included Rep. Richard Gephardt (whose lack of vote-getting appeal in the primaries ultimately ruined his chances) and Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, who lacked any national experience and who deduced that he wasn't The One when Kerry spent their bus trip in Iowa together watching the Tour de France. In fact, on that trip Kerry was scribbling an announcement speech—for Edwards.
Charles Ommanney / Contact for Newsweek
Elevating the game: The Edwardses and the Kerrys on the campaign plane
In choosing Edwards, 51, Kerry concluded that he didn't need help on foreign policy and defense, but needed some to win on the domestic front in the face of an improving economy. Edwards is relatively inexperienced, with few foreign-policy or defense credentials. But Kerry liked his grasp of Main Street America, his boyish image, his trial lawyer's advocacy skills—and, aides said, what they hoped would be his liberating effect on the often somber and self-involved guy at the top of the ticket. Edwards can "elevate John's game," said Kerry stepson Chris Heinz.
Indeed, Edwards's ingratiating incandescence has already brightened Kerry. The two became a buddy-buddy act, hugging and whispering like Starsky and Hutch after consuming the evidence. "I think we make a great couple," Kerry joked at a fund-raising breakfast in New York. Edwards's family, which includes two young towheads—6-year-old Emma Claire and 4-year old Jack—produced a multigenerational tableau on announcement day near Pittsburgh that a top White House aide ruefully conceded was "good pictures." Rapidly deploying Edwards's sales skills, the Kerry campaign, NEWSWEEK learned, cut a new spot—it will get heavy play this week—in which the North Carolinian touts his running mate's leadership by citing the testimony of Kerry's Vietnam Swift Boat crews. "Edwards is a terrific advocate," said Devine. "Now he's our advocate."
But it won't be an easy case to win, despite good vibes and photo ops. The electorate is so bitterly divided that days of generally favorable press produced only a modest "bounce" for the new Democratic ticket. In the NEWSWEEK Poll, Kerry-Edwards leads Bush-Cheney by a 51-45 percent margin in a two-way race, a slight uptick from Kerry's 46-45 percent margin in May. (The race is even closer—47-44-3—when Ralph Nader is added to the mix.) For the same Red-Blue reasons, voters said the Edwards pick had relatively little impact on their thinking, with only 21 percent saying it made them more likely to support Kerry. Voters regard Edwards favorably as a person—they think he is honest, caring, likable and principled—but also think he is less well prepared to "step in as president" than several previous VP selections, among them Joe Lieberman, Al Gore and Cheney. Democrats remain less committed to their ticket than Republicans are to theirs. "Kerry solidified his base a bit and that's it," said GOP polltaker David Winston.
NEWSWEEK ON AIR | 7/11/04
Campaign 2004: The Edwards Factor
Richard Wolffe, NEWSWEEK Washington correspondent, Kevin Miller, morning host, WPTF, Raleigh-Durham, NC, and Jonathan Alter, NEWSWEEK senior editor and NBC analyst
But the loose change at the edges of the Democratic base is crucial. Edwards comes across as a Clinton without the closet, the product of a Piedmont textile town where folks speak with a courtly caution about the ups and downs of local history. As such, Edwards deeply understands something invisible to the patrician Kerry: the lives and values of rural voters who often have a folk memory of Democratic ties. They form the bulk of the swing voters in states such as Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio. The Sunshine Boys wasted no time trying to reach them by defining "values" as honesty (read: where are the WMD?), a fair chance for a good job for everyone (read: Cheney's Halliburton, "Kenny Boy" Lay and "tax cuts for the rich") and pride in America's role as the world's moral leader (read: what about Abu Ghraib?).
Republicans weren't ready to concede an inch of that ground. No sooner had Kerry announced the Edwards pick than the Bush-Cheney campaign went up with an ad noting that he had opposed the so-called Laci Peterson law, which declared the murder of a pregnant woman would henceforth be considered two separate capital crimes under federal law. "John Kerry has his priorities," a voice in the ad says ominously. "Are they yours?"
The GOP and BC '04 mantra is as clear as it is familiar: that Kerry is "out of the mainstream" on a host of issues, among them his votes against "parental notification" laws on abortion, his low official ratings from the National Rifle Association (though Kerry is a hunter and an excellent shot) and his opposition to a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to the union of a man and a woman. Edwards's career as a trial lawyer will hurt him with swing voters in the suburban South, says GOP consultant Ralph Reed, who oversees the Bush-Cheney campaign in the Southeast. "Most of them are small-business types," he said, "and they don't like lawsuits."
CAMPAIGN 2004 COVERAGE
• Warming Up Kerry Blue skies: Their energy was infectious, but their numbers barely moved. Can Kerry-Edwards convert smiles into votes against Team Bush? Game on
• Alter: The Art of the Closing Argument A good political speech should resemble a good closing argument, where the case builds slowly to a devastating conclusion about the defendant
• John Edwards: VP Hopeful, Boyish Wonder Happy warrior: He was no superstar. But John Edwards's determination and ability to read the defense took him to the top
• Elizabeth Edwards: A Woman of the People She lost a child, fought late-in-life fertility issues and is trying the South Beach diet. Elizabeth Edwards can relate
Republicans were delighted to see Kerry and Edwards show up at a record-setting fund-raiser in New York City, where Whoopi Goldberg made crotch jokes, John Mellencamp called Bush a "thug" and Kerry called all the performers "the heart and soul of America." The event, far more Manhattan than Mayberry, "undercuts a lot of what [Kerry] was trying to do last weekend and with Edwards," said Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for BC '04.
Perhaps, but Cheney isn't necessarily the man to make the sale in the heartland, either. On a bus trip through Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, he generated local headlines, but seemed ill at ease when not surrounded by security and guaranteed a friendly audience. Urged to speak to the traveling press corps, he emerged like the groundhog Punxsutawney Phil—and quickly saw his own shadow. "I'm not going to say anything significant at all," he barked, "so quit taking notes." White House insiders insist Bush would never dump Cheney, whom they plan to use in laser-guided fashion to bring out the GOP vote. Nor will they bother attempting a makeover. "We're not going to put him in earth tones," said one. But the NEWSWEEK Poll shows that the president would enjoy a 53-44 percent lead if Colin Powell were his running mate, and a 49-47 lead with Sen. John McCain. In Pennsylvania, some Republicans last week touted their ex-governor Tom Ridge, who now heads the Department of Homeland Security. As for Kerry and Edwards, they were still on the road together, tossing a football on a tarmac, this time in New Mexico. Their lineup was set. Now all they have to do is score in November.
With Tamara Lipper in Washington, Rebecca Sinderbrand with Cheney and T. Trent Gegax in New York
