FreedomTalks

The Economist magazine has a good piece on presidential candidate John Edwards.

Mr Edwards is a man of big plans. No other presidential candidate, of either party, can match the sheer quantity, let alone the ambition, of his policy ideas. He has grand, progressive, goals—to end the war in Iraq (obviously), provide universal health care, address global warming, eliminate poverty in America within 30 years—and detailed blueprints of how to do it all.

Mr Edwards is no longer a policy neophyte. Instead, he has positioned himself as the voice of his party’s left wing. He renounced his support for the Iraq war in 2005 (Mr Obama never supported it, however) and has been a powerful critic since. He has steeped himself in progressive causes, particularly the battle against poverty, founding a centre at the University of North Carolina to study ways to combat deprivation. And he has assiduously built ties with the unions.

On economics, too, the Edwards brand of populism is hard to pigeonhole. With roots in the textile mills and strong links to the unions, he is regarded as the most protectionist of the Democratic front-runners—though the margins are narrowing fast as Hillary Clinton stages a retreat from her husband’s embrace of free trade.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 19th, 2007 at 3:40 pm and is filed under 2008, Elections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.