John Edwards was on PBS’s “News Hour with Jim Lehrer” and, well, the man was on fire, seriously. Listening to Edwards one can easily image how his administration would be transformational. More importantly, as far as his candidacy is concerned, if Edwards is able to speak with the same clarity with which he spoke during tonight’s show, his policies and vision for our country can only resonate with the general electorate.
RAY SUAREZ: [After asking about poverty as a political issue.] But as a presidential candidate, you’re talking to a country, an electorate, where the vast majority of people are not poor.
JOHN EDWARDS: That’s correct.
RAY SUAREZ: And you’re asking them to care, and you’re asking them, in effect, to go somewhere with you in order to change it. Is the country in 2007, 2008, in that kind of mood to listen to that message?
JOHN EDWARDS: Well, it’s going to be the message, whether they listen or not, because I do believe deeply in it. I don’t think poverty is the only issue facing the country. I think the middle class is struggling dramatically.
[...]
But I don’t think we can ignore, because somehow they’re supposed to be forgotten and invisible, the millions of people who, in fact, live in poverty every day in this country.
And I’ll go one step further: I actually believe that it is time for the president — and I would do this as president — to ask Americans to be patriotic about things other than war, to say, “We’re in this together. What we do together matters. And you have to be willing to sacrifice.”
I mean, if you want your country to be what it’s capable of being, then whether it’s on energy conservation, whether it’s on reaching out and helping your fellow Americans who are struggling, that collectively we are powerful, and what we do as a national community really matters. [Emphasis added.]
###
RAY SUAREZ: Well, as someone who has done well, you know the difference of how different kinds of income are treated by the tax code.
JOHN EDWARDS: Yes, I do.
RAY SUAREZ: Have we gotten to a place where working for wages is actually an inferior way of making money?
JOHN EDWARDS: Our tax code treats it as inferior, because my perception is that we value wealth over work. We treat wealth income much better than we treat work income.
[...]
RAY SUAREZ: Now, Americans are aspirational, and that’s one of the reasons why it’s been difficult in our history to have class-based politics. A lot of the people who would be helped by that kind of tax increase, say, “No, no, I want to be that rich person some day.”
JOHN EDWARDS: Oh, yes.
RAY SUAREZ: “So don’t tax the rich.”
JOHN EDWARDS: Well, I’m aspirational. I believe in aspiration. I believe in an America where people can come from nothing and do great things. I mean, that’s the heart and soul of what this country is.
But I think those of us — and that includes me — those of us who have been lucky, who’ve been successful, I didn’t get here by myself. My country was there every step of the way for me, every step of the way, whether it was borrowing money for college, going to a state university, both for undergraduate and graduate school. There’s not been a single place in my life where I did it alone. My country was always there for me. [Emphasis added]
And I think those of us who’ve taken advantage of the extraordinary opportunities that can exist in America, we have some responsibility to give something back. And we don’t want to pull the ladder up behind — at least I speak for myself, I don’t want to pull the ladder up behind me.
###
RAY SUAREZ: You’ve written most recently about restoring America’s reputation. Well, what do you think has happened to America’s reputation, and what would restoring it consist of?
JOHN EDWARDS: I think it’s been destroyed. I think America’s reputation in the world has literally been destroyed. The devastation of the last seven years is almost — it’s literally unprecedented.
And there are a lot of components to reversing that. The way I think about it is to reverse the bad, and then actually do some good. Reversing the bad means ending the war in Iraq; it means closing Guantanamo. The idea that the United States of America would hold anybody against their will without at least the right to some kind of hearing is un-American.
We should not be operating secret prisons; we should not be engaging in anything approaching torture or condoning torture; we should not have any additional spying — illegal, in my judgment — spying on the American people. [Emphasis added.]
Those things are un-American. They need to be stopped, and they will be stopped when I’m president.
But beyond that, the world needs to see America as a force for good again. Today, they see us as bullying, selfish, at war with the Muslim world. That has to change. And so I think there are lots of things we can do to change it.
Instead of spending $500 billion in Iraq, if we spent $3 billion, $3.5 billion a year to help lead an international effort to make education available to 100 million children in the world who have no education, in Africa, in the Muslim world, in Latin America. We can make a huge dent in stopping the spread of disease if sanitation, clean drinking water, were pushed by America at relatively low cost. I mean, I’ve seen from my own work in Africa what an enormous difference that can make.
Economic development, using micro-lending, micro-finance, I mean, it’s very clear to me that America, over time — it wouldn’t happen quickly — but over time could shift the perception that exists in the world today of America as a bullying, selfish country, only interested in expansion of our power, to us once again being the source and the light for opportunity and hope for the rest of the world.
The interview of John Edwards by Ray Suarez was wide raging, as you’ll learn, if you listen to the audio. I was very appreciative that Ray Suarez allowed Edwards ample time to respond to the questions, and that the triviality of the horse-race did not come up. Instead, the interview focused on Edwards’s vision and plan for our country. (You can read the full transcript here.)
