Different paths taken, same goalWASHINGTON -- "Two Americas" not only is a mantra from Senator John Edwards's bid for the White House this year, it also neatly describes the sharply contrasting worlds that he and his new political partner, John F. Kerry, hail from.
Their personalities, biographies, and styles -- diverging along the poles of Northern patrician and Southern Horatio Alger -- seem so at odds that even some leading Democrats who championed Edwards as a running mate believed Kerry would ultimately pick a truer soul mate who ensured chemistry on the ticket, such as US Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri or Governor Tom Vilsack of Iowa. Instead, Kerry chose a man with an immense gift of communication, a telegenic face, and a hearty laugh who preached the can-do optimism that Kerry has echoed lately, and also a 51-year-old who would still be young enough to be a vigorous presidential contender should Kerry serve eight years in the White House. The choice of Edwards represents a political reconciliation of sorts for Kerry. As the 2004 primaries approached, some of the presumptive nominee's most prickly remarks on the campaign trail were aimed at his colleague from North Carolina -- that Edwards may still have been "in diapers" when Kerry was at war in Vietnam (an inaccuracy for which he quickly apologized), and that the first-term senator was so untested in politics that "he can't even win his own state" in a theoretical head-to-head race against President Bush. Kerry appears to have worked through this early skepticism and put aside matters of ego in picking a running mate who is widely seen as generating more sizzle before audiences than he does. The key to Kerry's decision was creating a ticket that would electrify the party and unite working-class, rural, and moderate voters, even if Kerry and Edwards do not click as much on a personal level as Bill Clinton and Al Gore did. "Kerry's a guy who said: 'I'm willing to put aside whatever differences we had. I'm willing to pick a guy who will at times outshine me on the stump' -- and no question about it, he will," said Carter Eskew, who was a senior adviser to Gore's presidential campaign in 2000. "Edwards not only talks the talk, but walks the walk on an important issue in Kerry's campaign: empowering ordinary people, which Edwards has experienced in his own life, compared to Kerry's very different, patrician background." The North Carolina senator brings some regional balance to Kerry's background, but Eskew said Edwards's populist message could "add a couple of points to the Kerry vote in places where the economic misery index is high," such as West Virginia, Ohio, and other Midwestern swing states, more so than in the Republican-dominated South. Edwards, the child of Southern mill towns and the product of state schools, was born into poverty but rose to become a millionaire trial lawyer. He entered politics just six years ago, seeking a greater meaning in life after the death of his beloved first-born son. His up-from-the-bootstraps story contrasts sharply with Kerry's. The Massachusetts senator comes from a world of private schools and Ivy League colleges, a childhood that was more continental than country, and a career of public service -- in the Navy, as an assistant prosecutor, lieutenant governor, and in the US Senate. Throughout this presidential campaign, many Democrats have swooned over Edwards's message of bridging the "opportunity gap" between the haves and have-nots of the so-called two Americas and coming together at a time of war and economic difficulty as "One America," the name of his current political committee. It is this political message that provides common ground for a Kerry-Edwards partnership. In recent weeks, Kerry has added a line to his stump speech recalling that in Vietnam his diverse crew of shipmates in the Mekong Delta "were all literally in the same boat" -- and that he hopes to inspire that kind of bond among Americans. Kerry and Edwards have been unstinting critics of Bush, but they also try ardently to appeal to independent and conservative swing voters -- particularly Southerners, in the case of Edwards -- with what they see as a moderate message of economic opportunity and job creation, fair trade and lower deficits, strong defense and multilateral foreign policy, and affordable health care and better schools. They fit and they don't. They share a vision for the country, and yet they have the tracings of a political odd couple. Their wives, Teresa Heinz Kerry and Elizabeth Edwards, are close friends, but they are not. They are both competitive, and Edwards insisted through 2003 and early 2004 that he did not want to be anyone's running mate. Now they themselves are in the same boat, and it is difficult to predict whether they will develop a natural synchronicity. Beyond a natural athleticism -- in Edwards's case as a marathon runner -- and fathers who were influential role models, Edwards's life story intersects in few obvious ways with Kerry's. Johnny Reid Edwards was born in Seneca, S.C., on June 10, 1953. Wallace Edwards worked for textile mills, and his wife, Bobbie, worked in shops and at the post office. They lived in a three-room rental in the local mill village. They were so cash-strapped that Wallace borrowed $50 to pay the hospital bill so his wife and son could come home. They moved a half-dozen times for better jobs until settling in Robbins, N.C., when Edwards was 12. Edwards graduated from the town's public high school in 1971 and majored in textile science at North Carolina State University, a period when Kerry completed two tours of duty in Vietnam as a Navy lieutenant, came home, and became a leading antiwar protester. Edwards was a high school senior in April 1971 when Kerry delivered his now-famous speech before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, asking, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" They attended law school at roughly the same time, Edwards at the University of North Carolina and Kerry at Boston College. They each had two children early in their marriages. Edwards became a trial lawyer, while Kerry served as a prosecutor before winning his first election in 1982. In personality and style, both are fundamentally confident and inquisitive people. Both, notably, are also lawyers who see themselves fighting for the little guy. As a senator and during the presidential primaries, Edwards developed a reputation for a sunny outlook and a knowing understanding of voters' hopes and fears that made up for his limited government experience and lack of depth on national security. Edwards can light up a crowd in a way many observers compare to Clinton's appeal. The North Carolinian's flair before audiences was honed as a trial lawyer who won record-setting judgments, mostly for clients pursuing damages for medical malpractice. In perhaps his best-known case, facing off against a powerful hospital, Edwards convinced a jury that doctors' errors had caused the brain damage of a newborn who had begun coming out feet first and was deprived of oxygen. Though the girl, by then 6, could not speak for herself in court, Edwards said the records of her fetal heart monitor told of her pain, and he described what he imagined she was thinking. The jury awarded the family $6.5 million. Edwards and his wife, a former lawyer who is 55, had two children early in their marriage, Wade in 1979 and Cate in 1982, and he made time to coach their sports teams and help turn their Raleigh home into a popular hangout for his children's friends. But their life changed forever in April 1996 when 16-year-old Wade was killed in a traffic accident en route to the family's beach home. Everything stopped for a time; Edwards eventually returned to the courtroom, but no longer jogged through the cemetery where they buried Wade, to whom Edwards says he was "attached at the breastbone." The next year, national Democrats reached out to Edwards for a possible run against Senator Lauch Faircloth, a Republican. Democratic leaders were attracted to Edwards's intelligence and his capacity to put personal funds into his own campaign. Edwards, 45 at the time, offered himself to voters as a generational contrast to the 70-year-old Faircloth and won, with 51 percent of the vote. In his nearly six years in the Senate, Edwards helped oversee depositions during the Clinton impeachment trial and was instrumental in drafting a patients' bill of rights, which remains stuck in Congress. He served on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Both Edwards and Kerry made Gore's vice presidential short list in 2000, and friends who talked to Edwards then say he envisioned himself in the White House someday. As Edwards launched his own presidential campaign in 2003, some party leaders viewed him as an heir to Clinton's moderate, Southern blend of politics. That summer Edwards made a crucial decision: He sacrificed a reelection bid for the Senate to demonstrate his commitment to winning the Democratic presidential nomination. Edwards persisted in vying against Kerry after other leading candidates such as Gephardt and Howard Dean had dropped out -- and in spite of only a surprise second-place showing in Iowa and a single early primary win, in his native South Carolina. A day after Kerry's commanding victory in the Super Tuesday contests on March 2, Edwards exited the race in a speech at the Raleigh high school gym where his son Wade had once played. With his children -- Cate, his young son, Jack, and daughter Emma Claire -- and Elizabeth by his side, Edwards had praise for his future partner. "John Kerry has what it takes right here," Edwards said, pointing to his gut, "to be president of the United States. I, for one, intend to do everything in my power to make him the next president of the United States."
Patrick Healy can be reached at phealy@globe.com. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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