The Des Moines Register’s endorsement Sunday of North Carolina Sen. John Edwards for the Democratic presidential nomination was widely reported Monday.
But independent of that boon to Edwards’s campaign were other positive developments, mainly in the national mainstream media.
One week before the Iowa caucuses, the New York Times published a 3,200-word feature on Edwards, which couldn’t have been timed much better for the candidate who is running fourth in public opinion polls with about 12 percent to 14 percent of respondents.
The Washington Post editorial page, also Monday, ran the latest in its series of individual assessments on the Democratic candidates. Edwards received glowing remarks from the newspaper’s editors.
“Some presidential candidates seem to grow shriller or more haggard as the grueling campaign grinds on,” the Post editorial said. “North Carolina Sen. John Edwards is the opposite – a candidate who remains as appealing as ever and who seems to have grown more thoughtful and confident.”
While arguing that Edwards’s relative political inexperience is a drawback, the Post said that “nonetheless, Mr. Edwards has made reasonable use of his short time in government.” The newspaper cited his roles in crafting patients’ rights legislation and his focus on terrorism as plusses.
The Post realized the likelihood of Edwards emerging victorious was slim, though.
“It’s not clear that he’ll get the chance to go the distance in 2004,” the newspaper said. “But it would be too bad if this year were his only shot.”
Meanwhile, Edwards’s campaign benefited from the New York Times’s decision to run a profile of him — the last of the nine Democratic candidates — just seven days before the Iowa caucuses. The article, like most such profiles, was a regurgitation of Edwards’s campaign bio, glowing with remarks by friends and supporters but mentioning minimal criticism from opponents or outsiders. His prominent role in the blockade of many of President Bush’s judicial nominees was ignored. So, too, was his voting record on the Iraq war, which many perceived as flip-flopping.
The closest the Times article came to unfavorably characterizing Edwards was in an examination of his “capacity for bluntness.” The newspaper cited an instance in which Edwards was challenged by two lesbian students in New Hampshire, about his position on gay marriage, which he opposes.
“I don’t think America’s ready for that,” Edwards told the students. “There is no question about that.”
But the newspaper even couched that response in sympathetic terms.
“He paused, seeing the crestfallen looks on their faces,” the newspaper reported. “’It is heartbreaking,” he said. “There is no question about that.’”
But back in Iowa, the Des Moines Register endorsement emboldened Edwards. Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz, under the headline “How the Press Decides Winners,” wondered whether the Register’s support would give him “a bump.”
“How long before the editorial gets used in an Edwards ad?” Kurtz wrote. “Do you have a stopwatch?”
Edwards immediately paraded the editorial around at his campaign stops Sunday.
“This is a huge moment in this campaign,” Edwards said in Ames, Iowa. “We have extraordinary momentum.”
Paul Chesser is associate editor of Carolina Journal. Contact him at [email protected].