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Unfortunately, without Dean, the Democratic primaries are lapsing into a synthetic and unsatisfying beauty pageant. This is mostly John Edwards' fault. If he were really running for President, he would be demanding specificity, and forcing creativity, from John Kerry on Iraq and lots of other issues. He would be taking risks, trying to break the entropy of the campaign. A truly sharp John Edwards might say something like, "John Kerry, the more I look at these Bush deficits, the more I think that you and I should scale back some of these promises we've made. Here's my list. What's yours?" But Edwards is not a particularly sharp candidate. He is a slick speaker but lacks the crackle and candor of Dean's plain talk. Indeed, Edwards gives the same speech, platitude for platitude, every time. He doesn't talk about foreign policy, and he rarely answers questions from the audience. At his maiden New York primary speech, at Columbia University last week, Edwards was confronted by AIDS protesters who wanted him to address their issue and by local reporters curious as to why he hadn't mentioned Iraq. His bland responses--that AIDS was a test of "moral responsibility" and that Iraq was "a very important issue"--disappointed both groups. "He didn't speak with any detail at all," said Kim Sue, one of the protesters. "I think I'll have to vote for Kerry."
There are quasi-plausible reasons for Edwards' odd unwillingness to confront Kerry. He has defined himself as Mr. Sunshine, and since his future in politics is probably brighter than his present, he doesn't want to sully the white suit. He may also be pulling his punches because he wants to be Vice President. That would be foolish: his prospects aren't as obvious as most citizen pundits think. Kerry will surely want a running mate eager to eviscerate the opposition, particularly in the debate against Vice President Cheney (or, failing that, a Vice President who will bring his home state along--and Dick Gephardt has a better chance of doing both than Edwards). Edwards' fluffy passivity is not a very good audition if the job description is attack dog.
But there may be another, more sensitive reason that Edwards is restraining himself. The real case against Kerry is a matter of character, not substance. Edwards hinted at it with his "longest answer" line: not only does Kerry have a flannel-mouthed inability to utter a simple sentence, but his orotundities also serve to reinforce the notion that the Senator from Massachusetts is a patrician stiff, too smug to speak in a manner decipherable by ordinary Americans. In fairness, John Kerry has been as sick as a dog these past few weeks and duller than he might ordinarily be--but there was a real sense last week that Kerry, assuming victory, had lapsed into flabby aristocratic entitlement, a persona he inhabits when not in mortal combat.