John Edwards banks on sincerity

Despite D.C. cynicism about his motives and his political persona, Edwards woos voters in New Hampshire and Iowa with authenticity.

By Walter Shapiro

Read more: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Politics, Campaign Finance, News, Walter Shapiro, New Hampshire, John Edwards, Barack Obama, 2008 election

Photo: AP/Jim Cole

John Edwards answers questions during a campaign stop in Claremont, N.H., on Sept. 28.

Oct. 1, 2007 | LITTLETON, N.H. -- Here in the birthplace of the author of "Pollyanna" and the home of the "World's Longest Candy Counter," a middle-aged woman asked John Edwards the kind of cream-filled questions that would give any presidential candidate a sugar rush. What "personal characteristic," she asked, distinguishes you from your Democratic rivals?

In response to a similar question, Hillary Clinton probably would have stressed her experience and her commitment to "change," the poll-tested buzzword of this election. Barack Obama almost certainly would have waxed inspirational and talked about how cynics in Washington dismiss him as a "hope-monger." But for Edwards, it all came down to sincerity.

"You have to make a judgment," Edwards, dressed in jeans and an open-necked white shirt, told a Friday lunchtime crowd of 250 first-primary voters, who filled every square inch of the local community center. "We're not looking for the most cunning and most manipulative and most artful politician," Edwards said in what may have been an indirect jab at the Clintons. "You have to look us in the eye and listen to us and make a determination about what's inside us. Is this real?"

The answer -- which ended with Edwards pointing out that every day in any White House "the personal political interest of the president will come into conflict with the interests of America" -- won hearty applause. But Edwards himself has been publicly grappling with an authenticity problem ever since his mid-year campaign-spending reports highlighted the most politically costly haircut since Samson was shorn.

After the town meeting, Jill Brewer, a builder and part-time college student from nearby Franconia, said, "I liked him much more than I thought I would." In fact, Edwards is now running neck-and-neck with Hillary for her affections. "Seeing Edwards here in the same room distances him in my mind from the $400 haircut that I so disliked."

It was the end of a strange week for the Edwards campaign. He put together a strong debate performance against Clinton on Wednesday night (an evening when Obama was nearly invisible) and then muddled everything by suddenly announcing during a CNN interview Thursday afternoon that he planned to be the first Democrat to accept federal matching funds -- and the restrictions on overall campaign spending that come with it. With the third-quarter financial reports due on Monday, the Edwards campaign would be lagging far behind Clinton and Obama with an estimated $7 million raised.

Even as Edwards toured the North Country of New Hampshire, a state where he finished fourth in the 2004 primary, his entire campaign strategy is premised on being the Giant Killer who defeats Hillary and Barack in the Iowa caucuses. It remains a plausible scenario for Edwards. As a pollster for another campaign said, "Edwards is still at the top in Iowa. He has his base there and holds more than a quarter of the vote. And they're solid. The question that remains, though, is how does he expand that number?"

As someone who has been covering Edwards since his first foray into New Hampshire during the summer of 2002, I have long been stunned by the animus toward him that lurks just beneath the surface of elite opinion. In conversations with Washington political consultants, major Democratic donors, former Senate colleagues and big-time reporters, I have repeatedly heard the vague, but damning, refrain that Edwards is a shallow phony and his commitment to fighting poverty is mostly a political pose. This subterranean whispering campaign -- which predates his current uphill struggle against Clinton and Obama -- pits these insiders against Iowa Democrats and other rank-and-file Edwards supporters.

The $400 haircut was indeed a devastating political snafu, though the Edwards campaign has pointed out (to little avail) that the bulk of the cost went for the scissor artist's transportation costs. Yet, in fairness, there is a serious question about whether Edwards' rivals have equally extravagant moments away from the public eye. Both Clinton, who transformed herself from hair-bands to high gloss during her White House years, and the fashion-forward Obama also appear susceptible to expensive grooming habits.

Edwards is also ridiculed for the grotesquely large (28,000 square feet) mega-mansion that he built in Chapel Hill, N.C., after the 2004 election. While the aerial pictures suggest a Ritz-Carlton hotel or an executive conference center, it is unclear whether the underlying objection is size, cost (land is comparatively cheap in North Carolina) or non-elite taste. For example, would it have been permissible for Edwards to spend, say, $10 million on a 4,000-square-foot Park Avenue duplex that is not visible from the air? There is a sense that the anti-Edwards judgment would have been milder if he talked only of the political problems of the middle class.

During a Friday morning interview in his campaign van, on the way to Littleton against the colorful backdrop of early fall foliage, I asked Edwards if he felt victimized by a double standard. "Oh, I don't know," Edwards began, perhaps skittish about portraying himself as a media martyr. "If I was going through a presidential campaign for the first time, I might think that. But having been through a campaign, I think that it just comes with the territory. The media will turn on me for awhile, then they'll turn on Clinton for awhile, then they'll turn on Obama. That's just the way it works."

Next page: It is odd that Edwards is belittled for his powers of in-person persuasion