Edwards plays the Bubba card
CONWAY, N.H. -- HUBBA-HUBBA, Bubba.
Here's looking at you . . . or, at least, for you.
That's what John Edwards is doing as he takes his populist pitch to New Hampshire's North Country: embarking on a Bubba hunt.
To help, Edwards has rounded up Bob Jones, perhaps better known to TV viewers of a certain age as Cooter from "The Dukes of Hazzard," and the Bluegrass Brothers, who are cranking out some foot-tapping high harmonies.
As the event's emcee, Cooter is laying the cornpone on with a trowel. "The Dukes of Hazzard," in his telling, was one of the most popular TV shows ever, a paragon of moral values (surpassing, apparently, even such epic parables as "Hogan's Heroes" and "Gilligan's Island"). The Duke boys, you see, always did the right thing - just the way John Edwards always does.
If Cooter is leaning hard into his good ol' boy role, campaign consultant David "Mudcat"' Saunders is in full angry mode.
The official name of this campaign swing is "economic fairness for the North Country," but he and Cooter and the boys call it the " 'Let's help John Edwards screw those who screwed us tour,' " Mudcat says. Us being rural America.
And who would that be?
"Who screwed us?" he asks, voice rising in incredulity. "The Clintons screwed us." And, he adds, "Anybody that says different is delusional."
The Clintons did it with NAFTA, and the Bubbas know it, Mudcat says. Why, it's no wonder Hillary once sat on the board of
"The slogan of Wal-Mart is the same as what the Clintons' policy has always been for rural America: 'Always less,' " he says. (Actually, Wal-Mart's former catchphrase was "Always low prices," but you get Mudcat's drift.)
On this recent afternoon, certainly, a good crowd of White Mountains folk have driven their Saabs and Volvos and Chrysler PT Cruisers and Subaru Outbacks and minivans and other mountain jalopies down from hills to hear Edwards, who, clad in faded jeans and a crisp blue shirt up at the elbows, looks like he just stepped from the pages of Populist Quarterly.
It turns out one can earn a pretty penny and still count as one of the dispossessed. Why, Edwards is promising healthcare subsidies to families pulling down as much as $100,000 a year.
If you were expecting a detailed discussion of rural problems, however, expect again. Not even earlier at UNH, where the candidate fielded a few questions from academic experts. Instead, Edwards has some basic policy ideas - universal healthcare, broadband access, a capital fund for rural America, better pay to lure teachers to rural areas, tuition help to attract nurses, plus an effort to site green industries there - whose order he rearranges depending on the question.
Edwards's message is that Washington is so broken that only an outsider ready to do battle with the special interests can fix things. And though the other candidates may think of sparsely populated places as flyover land, he, a small-town boy at heart, will strive to revive rural America. (The question occurs: Does the candidate realize the Conway region is a thriving four-season destination?)
Edwards also vows that in January of 2009, he'll tell Congress that "if by this summer - July - you haven't passed universal healthcare, you lose your healthcare."
How, I ask later, would a president strip Congress of healthcare? Through legislation, he replies. "Anybody who opposes it, I will personally go into their congressional districts everywhere in America and make sure that their voters know that they are standing up for their own healthcare but they are not standing up for the healthcare of the American people."
His threat adds a certain oomph to Edwards's spiel, but it's just not the way a president with more than one issue on his agenda would operate.
Now, it's true that with Mudcat's aid, a similar rural focus helped elect Mark Warner governor of Virginia in 2001. Still, Edwards's message sounds tinny and out-of-place in sophisticated New Hampshire.
"It's fertile ground all over America for this kind of politics," Mudcat insists. "Bubbas are everywhere."
Hmmmm. From Fred Harris to Dick Gephardt to Tom Harkin to Bob Kerrey, populists, of conviction or convenience, have actually fared poorly here. Add to that the state's well-tuned authenticity meter, and you see why I suspect Edwards's hick shtick just won't click.
Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com. 