The Ascent of a Common Man

[fencesitter]

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/08/17/opinion/17brooks.html]

These are excerpts from the Times Select site. I can't find a free access page, sorry!

Could David Brooks be a closet Edwards Fan?

By DAVID BROOKS
Published: August 17, 2007


Every presidential candidate tells a certain sort of story. Some talk about being part of a great movement. Some talk about surviving an ordeal with a band of brothers. John Edwards’s stories begin with family, continue with work and solitary struggle and conclude with triumph over privilege.

*******

But out here it’s clear that the Edwards campaign is based on the same conviction that organized his last campaign: no one understands regular people the way he does. No one else can get out of a bus in places like Pocahontas, Iowa, and bond with the farmers, nurses and hairstylists the way he can. No one else comes from their ranks the way he does.

********

All this cohered in January 2004, with his “Two Americas” speech, the best stump speech of the last decade. It was a tight, single-themed argument, weaving the story of his personal rise with a call to heal the rifts that divide the nation.

This time, Edwards is not as exciting a campaigner. But he is more substantive. He seems to have concluded that eloquence alone can’t make him presidential. So he talks less about himself and mixes his bromides with wonkery. His answers on everything from China to ethanol are filled with complex, multipart arguments. He passes on opportunities to be demagogic.

At the moment, he is being overshadowed by the two rock stars in the race. But his connection to voters is real. And so ultimately the question about Edwards will be what it has always been: Is there depth there?

In a 45-minute conversation, I found him vague about subjects like social mobility and globalization, in a way that Clinton and Obama would not be. Yet beneath the pretty-boy exterior, there is something fierce lurking inside. It comes out in his resentment toward those born to privilege (which helped sour his relationship with John Kerry). And it drives him relentlessly upward, even in the face of illness and tragedy.

[jedicord]

1. Brooks just couldn't help himself - he had to throw in "hairstylists".

Ugh.

Thanks for the snippets, though. I saw the article was available and wanted to read it, but refuse to pay NYT.