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By David Rogers
Wednesday, October 6, 2004
The New Editor
Amazingly, John Edwards failed to meet the low standards of Dan Quayle.
The Democratic nominee, while not falling prey to a set-up wisecrack like the one that leveled
the Indiana Senator, failed to live up to his reputation as a killer trial lawyer capable of mixing
folksy Southern charm with the matchless debating skills that made him a multimillionaire in
North Carolina courthouses.
Having Dan Quayle as a role model, Edwards managed not to compare himself to John
Kennedy (after all, John Forbes Kerry has done enough JFK-aping for the both of them). But
he walked into every other trap the vice-president set for him, and he managed to set some
for himself.
Just as Dan Quayle showed he was clearly not ready for prime time and in no way ready to
step up to the top job, so John Edwards showed himself to be callow, inexperienced,
ignorant, dishonest and just plain wrong.
As Dick Cheney said, “It’s hard to know where to begin, there are so many inaccuracies.”
Let’s start with something Edwards repeated three times that every high school civics
student, and everyone who has ever been married or known married people knows to be false
-- “No state for the last 200 years has ever had to recognize another state's marriage.”
Senator Edwards said it three times.
It is false. John Edwards knows it to be false. Every American paying attention knows it to
be false.
Article IV, Section 1 of the United States Constitution says, “Full Faith and Credit shall be
given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other
State.” That means that a marriage in one state must, repeat must, be recognized by every
other state.
And, as every person who ever married in one state and traveled to another knows, that’s the
way it works. If you’re married in North Carolina, you’re still married when you get off the
plane in Ohio.
Either John Edwards knows this, and he is a bald-faced liar, or he is the stupidest man in
America, and he thinks Bill Clinton didn’t commit adultery because when he cheated on his
wife he wasn’t in Arkansas.
This is not a mistake Dan Quayle would have made. He might not have been able to spell
"marriage," but the two-term Senator from Indiana knew his wife was still his wife in
Wisconsin or Wyoming.
And Edwards was clearly out of his depth discussing the facts of Iraq and Afghanistan, or
any other issue of substance against the most adept pratitioner of “serious talk” in the history
of the vice-presidency. While Cheney rattled off obscure facts and discussed with mastery
the minutiae of foreign leaders and Edwards’ feeble attendance record on Senate Committees,
Edwards confused Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
And then there is the 90% mistake. John Kerry made it repeatedly, and got away with it. But
just as John Edwards is no Dan Quayle, neither is Dick Cheney George W. Bush. Twice,
Cheney called Edwards on this nonsense that excludes the Iraqis who, as George Bailey said
in Bedford Falls, “do most of the living and dying” in Iraq. The second time Edwards
repeated the calumny, Cheney called the comments “beyond the pale,” and Edwards, like a
frightened child caught red-handed a second time with his hand in the cookie jar, interrupted
the vice president, saying, “Oh no I’m not.”
Dan Quayle didn’t do that. He got caught by Lloyd Bentsen comparing himself to Kennedy,
and Quayle stood there, stoically, and took his scolding like a man.
Edwards took it like a spoiled child.
This debate, like the Bentsen-Quayle debate, was between a grown-up, experienced,
responsible politician and a kid playing dress-up. If the contest were over vice-presidential
candidates alone, this contest would be over, and it would be a wipe-out. But, as we know,
vice-presidents don’t win the race for you. Just ask President Dukakis.
David Rogers is a contributing editor for The New Editor.
Paul Geary
David Rogers