Edwards Wins Iowa - for Obama

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By Bill Burkett (about the author) Page 2 of 3 page(s)

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Clinton voted for the War in Iraq. Obama did not. Yet BOTH have voted to sustain and even expand it in every measure brought before the US Senate. Does that actually say more about the reality of their position than anything else? I think so. And when the question is asked about how to end the war, neither Obama or Clinton seem to have a clue -- or be willing to step out of the box and even vaguely answer the real question.

Yes, Senator Edwards voted FOR the Iraq war. But he has long since admitted he was wrong in his judgment and based that judgment on poor and false information shared by the White House. He seems to have gained clarity in that position. But he consistently voted against actions from free trade to homeland security that not just allowed, but encouraged jobs, investments and our best ideas of this generation to be exported to other countries and competitors.

And his campaign rhetoric and advertisements have framed the absolute need for change for three years now.

He has framed the economic issues like no other. From the "cheap dollar" policy of the Bush administration and its continuing calamitous results, to middle America, to the export of production jobs from Hershey, Pennsylvania to Southern California, he has framed the pain index.

It is from this framed portrait of America as suffered by middle America that Senator Obama has recast himself as an agent of change.

As a skilled orator and with black heritage in his corner, he has "Oprah-tized" the electorate, especially a younger generation who weren't even born and haven't been taught the truth about the Reagan fundamentals, that Senator Edwards frames as the "cause" of our current economic malaise; and the pain index is the "effect".

Instead, the younger voters want life as a television show, and don't have the experience factor of what really brought all of this into being. And, they don't care. Like Fantasy football, most of their lives have been built more around a half generation of the remake of the evening news from investigative journalism to ABC's version of the National Enquirer - "Britney News" and Entertainment Tonight.

Subconsciously, Senator Edwards has answered the basic debating question; "Why is there a Need for Change?"

Framing that issue at times has required Senator Edwards to be hardball serious because it includes the pain of people in every walk of life. And from that, Oprah and Entertainment Tonight calls it "anger" and tries to defuse the imbalance of substance and lack thereof, thus making this a beauty contest versus an issue debate.

I was a college level debater and a fairly good one. I went to college on debating scholarships, believe it or not. It's the classic, good guy, bad guy routine that we see played out as "good cop, bad cop" on TV.

To this point John Edwards has been the bad cop. Barack Obama has been the smooth and polished good cop.

What remains to be proven is how long the romance of the pundits will last.

Some of us were shocked that the Bush mystique lasted through the pirating of America. Not only the fourth estate, but even Paul Revere watched and slept while the nation was stolen and the current malaise was laid in place.

Even the Republican establishment realizes that it was the romance of the image and Hollywood of GW Bush, the classic good old boy picture -- that also marked the death of the Reagan era.

And within the coming weeks, we will watch as the Republican establishment tries to kill off the only candidates (Huckabee and Paul) who would admit the folly of elections based upon hot air and good feelings, rather than prickly heat and hard-nosed debate.

So the new question now arises.

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