Exclusive Interview with John Edwards

As you should know by now, John Edwards came to Reno yesterday, just one day after announcing his candidacy for President. Obviously, Edwards is putting great importance on the Nevada caucus, which has been moved up to be right after Iowa. He conducted a “town hall” meeting to a very receptive (and larger than expected) audience at the Grand Sierra Resort. After that, he had a brief press conference with the local media. And after that, he had a brief one-one-one interview with Reno and its Discontents.

The Internet seems to be a key element to Edwards’ “ground up” strategy, a phrase which he used repeatedly throughout the evening. Political catch-phrase, or a sincere articulation of a desire to return to grass-roots government? It’s hard to say…possibly a combination of both. One thing’s for sure, though – he’s trying to harness the exploding phenomenon of web-based media, and trying to generate buzz on the blogosphere. Hence, his sitting down with us for a chat.

One of the comments Edwards made in his town hall meeting was that being President was not about ego (obviously a jab at Bush), and it was a hard job and a lonely job. Which made me wonder, “Why would anyone want this job?” So I asked him.

Edwards replied, “Because I think that there’s great opportunity for change if we actually have some courage and stand up for the things that America should be standing up for, and we engage the American people in bringing about the change from the ground up, instead of from the top down, which I think is a mistake.”

Ok, there’s that “ground-up” thing again. And a reference to Americans having courage and standing up for things. That goes back to a point he made during the town hall meeting, saying that Americans needed to be willing to sacrifice, and not just for what’s best for us, but what’s best for the world (a key issue that jumps to mind is global warming). The theory being, if we show that we’re willing to sacrifice for the good of the world, then we can regain our moral leadership.

The topic of moral leadership, of course, is a highly debatable one, so we won’t go into it here. But, one of the areas where some people say that our loss in moral standing has cost us is in our relationship with China. The Chinese government thinks we have little weight in criticizing them for human rights abuses in light of our own torture scandals, not to mention the dismal view of America’s willingness to cooperate with the worldwide community after going against international opinion to invade Iraq.

And China brings up another interesting point. The country owns lots of US debt via treasury securities. (Edwards, by the way, does not make reducing the deficit a priority issue. He stated that he would want to make sure it wouldn’t grow, but that issues such as poverty, universal healthcare, education, and global warming would be his primary concern). The fact that such a fast-growing economic player owns so much of our deficit does put us in a rather precarious situation. To his credit, Edwards did make a point of saying that due to our current focus on Iraq, we’ve ignored other important foreign policy issues such as China. So, with all this in the back of my mind, I asked him what his policy toward China would be.

“China’s a complicated challenge for America,” he replied. “They’re a country that’s going a hundred miles per hour in economic development, and they have huge challenges themselves. They have huge environmental problems, population problems, extraordinary abject poverty—although they’ve made some progress in that area. And, [Taiwan] continues to be an issue between us and the Chinese.

“I think we have to deal with China with our eyes wide open. We have to address their human rights abuses, we have to address their environmental degradation and the incredible damage they’re doing to the ozone. They’re building more than one power plant a week that’s not scrubbed. And, their military buildup, though we know it’s happening, is opaque. We don’t know what they’re doing. And they won’t tell us. So it makes it very hard for us to have any kind of serious cooperative relationship when we don’t know what they’re doing militarily. Which in turn creates a problem for us, because we have to maintain some of our weapons systems that are necessary in the event that something happens in China, particularly with China and Taiwan.”

“So…on the issues of economic considerations, trade, human rights abuses, military buildup, environment, China presents enormous challenges for America. Having said that, they want access to our market. And they’re very inwardly focused. Which means they don’t want to rock the boat internationally. Which gives us a lot of leverage with them. So we have to take advantage of that leverage. We need to be engaged with them, but we need to recognize that we’ve got to keep them at arm’s length.”

Switching gears, I proceeded to ask about his political strategy for winning the Democratic nomination. After all, I pointed out, there’s already been a lot of buzz about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. “On the practical political side….I think I’ve shown a lot of strength in the early states,” Edwards said. “More important than that, my campaign is different. This is a campaign built from the ground up. This is a campaign that believe that the Net roots, the blogging…is not just a tool to be left on the side, but has to be an integral part of a grass roots operation that is built from the ground up. What happens is you have politicians that want to take advantage of blogging and the Net and raising money, but they’re not changing anything about their approach to both politics and democracy. If you actually believe in grass roots and if you actually believe that the kind of things that you’re doing make a difference, then you ought to also believe that the only way we’re going to change the county is by activating Americans. I haven’t heard anybody else talking about that…I think it’s a fundamentally different approach to a political operation.”

Time for one last question, so I asked him something Myrna the Minx had wanted to know…how his work at the Poverty Center and UNC has changed his approach to politics. Basically, Edwards said it hasn’t. “The only thing about my work on poverty, is it’s made it easier for me to be really strong about the things I feel inside. And politicians don’t want to talk about the 37 million people who live in poverty, because it may not be helpful to them or whatever. But if you spend time in low-income communities, you start to take it very personally. Especially for somebody like me, who has everything … and when I watch the struggles and [have] been inside the struggles of families who have trouble paying their bills and feeding their children… we can’t stand by and let this happen. We have to do something about it.”

Of course there were several questions I didn’t ask, some of which readers of this blog had suggested. Sorry, not trying to offend our readership (that’s Myrna’s job), but some of those questions weren’t that great, some had already been answered during his town hall meeting, and the rest I just didn’t have time for. The Iraq issue…it’s been done. Everybody knows he’s apologized for voting for the war, and everybody knows he wants to pull troops out of Iraq. The Yucca Mountain issue, yes, we all know he’s against it. Naturally, someone in the audience at the town hall meeting asked him that anyway, and his response got the predictable thunderous applause. (Does anyone actually think any sane Democratic candidate is going to come to Nevada and say they’re for Yucca Mountain?) What’s different now from his failed attempt in 2004? He has seen the power of people to change things. Hence, his “ground up” approach.

What are my impressions of the man? Well…he’s alright. It’s tough to accurately judge anyone on a brief meeting, let alone a politician. And make no mistake, John Edwards is a politician. But he’s certainly likeable, and seems to have a down-to-earth perspective. He’s charismatic, but not necessarily magnetic. His isn’t grandiose, and he comes off as thoughtful and level-headed. And while he doesn’t hide his opinions of current policy, he seems more interested in delivering a positive message for the future than attacking past mistakes. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that his talk of sacrifice and regaining moral leadership was more like conceptual rhetoric than pragmatic problem solving. Perhaps that’s what America needs right now. Or perhaps I’m just too politically cynical. In either case, the real question will be if Edwards’ “ground up” plan will be enough to sway attention away from the other (presumed) Democratic candidates who’ve already grabbed so much of the media spotlight. It’s going to be interesting to watch. And it’s nice that we’ve got a front row seat here in Nevada.

Similar Posts:

• A Chat with John Edwards
• Elizabeth Edwards Opens The John Edwards Campaign Office In Reno
• John Edwards Makes It Official

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