America Dodged a Bullet Named John Edwards

In light of the John Edwards affair scandal, the country dodged a bullet in 2004 when Edwards was defeated for the Democratic nomination by John Kerry. Thinking about a candidate with Edwards’ stunningly bad judgement in the Oval Office is enough to make anyone shudder, unless you’re a fan of how George W. Bush has driven America into the ditch for the past eight years.



Still a first term U.S. Senator from North Carolina, Edwards was struggling to stay in the presidential race during late 2003 after his fundraising dried up. He had trouble making his payroll that December, a fact his staff kept secret. His campaign was running on fumes before his surprise second place showing in the Iowa caucuses over better known contenders like Howard Dean and Richard Gephardt gave it new life.

Kerry narrowly edged Edwards in Iowa on Jan. 19, with 37.6% of the vote to Edwards’ 31.8%. Kerry rode the momentum from his Iowa victory and steamrolled his opponents, winning all but four of the primaries and caucuses that followed. He wrapped up the nomination when Edwards dropped out in early March.

With participation in the Iowa caucuses estimated at about 124,000 that year, Edwards would have won if only a few thousand caucusgoers had chosen him over Kerry. And it could easily have happened. By caucus night, Edwards was surging on the strength of his powerful "Two Americas" closing speech, which he rolled out late in the game on Dec. 29, and his last minute endorsement by the Des Moines Register. It’s plausible that then Edwards would have been the one coasting on a wave of subsequent victories to the nomination.

According to NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd, Edwards' chief miscalculation was not devoting more of his energy to Iowa in 2003, instead of spending so much time in New Hampshire. The Edwards campaign only started rounding up Iowa precinct captains in early December, and eventually had them in place in just 75% of all precincts. In longtime USA Today columnist Walter Shapiro's book on the '04 race, One Car Caravan, he described Edwards' statewide caucus organization as "having been assembled out of tin foil and chewing gum."



In early 2004, I volunteered for Edwards’ presidential campaign at his headquarters in Raleigh, N.C. It gave me an up close glimpse at an operation that often seemed as much software start-up as national political campaign. I witnessed a weird hybrid of an organization that was chronically disorganized, struggling to adapt to the big leagues of presidential politics, and flying by the seat of its pants, but with a top-down, corporate feel.

I should have known things were a little nutty after meeting Edwards’ close pal and eventual baby daddy fall guy Andrew Young, then serving as Director of Operations. Young handed me a campaign credit card on my second day through the door as a volunteer (I’d walked in off the street, with no mention of my previous campaign experience), and sent me out to pick up supplies.

My volunteer duties started with stuffing envelopes, about as entry level as it gets, before I graduated to phonebanking, calling to put other local volunteers on the schedule, and helping answer the phones. Which afforded me a window seat to the campaign’s panic on the morning after Edwards won the South Carolina primary on Feb. 3. As luck would have it, the not-ready-for-prime-time Edwards for President website crashed due to traffic overload. Campaign staffers and volunteers spent the day taking hundreds of credit card donations over the phone.



Following South Carolina, Edwards’ only primary win that year, I e-mailed a close friend of Elizabeth Edwards and asked him to pass along some of my observations as a volunteer about how the campaign was functioning. In retrospect, this was a naïve move on my part, since things were set in stone by that point. Who knows if my e-mail was ultimately given any more attention than the myriad letters that arrived at the headquarters containing unsolicited campaign advice, and were promptly stored away in filing cabinets, unread and unanswered. Although Elizabeth’s friend did get back to me immediately, and we had a long phone conversation.

I’m not saying his 2004 effort was grossly mismanaged, because every political campaign is chaotic to a degree. But re-reading what I wrote in hindsight of Edwards’ tabloid downfall, I’m struck by how fortunate it is that the Edwards campaign wasn’t a little more organized that winter, at least based on what I saw from my admittedly limited perspective as an ordinary volunteer.



Here’s some excerpts from that e-mail...