President John Edwards, Think About It.

Freshman Senator John Edwards is a hugely successful trial lawyer. He’s running for President with financial support predominantly from other such trial lawyers, who have made a career of extracting large sums of money from insurance companies and pocketing a third of it before it gets to the ever-so-deserving widows and orphans. Eighty percent of the money he has raised so far has come from other trial lawyers, or from himself and his family.

That alone should make people around the country very, very nervous. I’ve been a trial lawyer myself for 31 years (semi-retired now), and it makes me very, very nervous.

I think it was Mark Twain who said, “What is the function of a jury? It is twelve men assigned to decide who has the better lawyer.”

The primary function of trial lawyers is to bury the negatives and puff up the positives so the jury will back up a truck to the bank of the insurance company and hand them a shovel to pick up the cash. It is a simple job to break down a dishonest witness on the stand in cross-examination. I’ve done that a few hundred times. It is a much more demanding task to take apart an honest witness on the stand, and make him appear to be dishonest.

I’ve never had reason to do that, because I have only represented clients whom I genuinely believed in. The fees I might have gotten for the cases I refused to take probably add up to more than a million dollars. I have no regrets about that. We make our choices in this life and then we live by them.

But for anyone to get extremely wealthy as a trial lawyer, which John Edwards has done, means he has to have cut corners on the truth, bamboozled judges and juries, and twist justice into a pretzel. The big money in trial law does not come from defending the truly innocent, or representing citizens who have been genuinely harmed through no fault of their own and seek just compensation for their injuries.

No, the big paydays come for lawyers who take on clients with huge defects in their legal positions – like they actually murdered the people they are charged with murdering, or they contributed to the harm that happened to them and deserve no compensation. A lifelong friend of mine became an excellent surgeon, like his father before him. When he started in medical school, I asked him what specialty he intended to take up. He replied, "Diseases of the rich.”

My friend was joking. He became a thoracic surgeon. But somewhere near the end of law school, or early in his career, John Edwards made a similar choice for real. He decided to specialize in “legal problems of the rich (or soon to be rich).” And when you makes a choice like that, you must take your clients as you find them. The fact that sometimes they do not deserve, legally, the compensation they seek is merely a technical problem to be solved by the tricks of the trade.

What are the skills of a successful trial lawyer? They must be articulate; they must either be knowledgeable, or at least seem to be that way. They must be fast on their feet, mentally. They must dress for success. They must elicit sympathy and concern, regardless of whether they feel that way themselves. And they must have their ethics surgically removed at birth.

I must make clear that I do not condemn all trial lawyers in all cases. There are exceptions to the rule, honorable men and women who will mount a strong case or a strong defense without deception, and let the chips fall where they may. But the Johnnie Cochrans, the Gerry Spences, and John Edwardses of this world are the rule, not the exception.

A classic example of Edwards’ ability in to make an honest man seem questionable in cross-examination came during the Senate Judiciary hearings concerning Judge Pickering. In terms of integrity and knowledge of the law, Edwards is not fit to black the boots of Pickering. But with false charges, innuendo, and claims of “evidence I have but cannot reveal at this time,” Edwards engaged in character assassination of Pickering. Did any of you readers with long memories detect a whiff of Senator Joe (“Tail Gunner”) McCarthy boring in on General Marshall at the House Unamerican Affairs Committee hearings? I sure did. Same slimy tactics. But Edwards got away with it. McCarthy didn’t.

Alert readers will notice that the qualities of a big-dollar trial lawyer fit a certain former President. Verbally adept, dresses right, seems sympathetic, has no ethics. That list fits Billyjeff Clinton to a tee. But John Edwards is no Bill Clinton.

In my half a century plus, I have never seen any other politician with the same combination of raw political skills, self-centered power-seeking, and total lack of ethics as Bill Clinton. I have read the textbook descriptions of sociopathic personalities or “anti-social personality disorder.” I think that is what Bill Clinton exhibits, and will continue to do for the rest of his life. He is a self-absorbed user and taker to whom all other people are merely means to an end.

Is John Edwards that bad as a politician and public person? No. Clinton set a very low standard (or high standard, if you will, for those interested in success at any price). I doubt we will see the likes of Bill Clinton again in the next fifty years. Hillary! is not as bad as he is, though she is a contender. His various pod people – Carville, Emanuel, Bagala, Stephenopolous -- are not as bad as he is. Edwards is not as bad as he is.

Why should the press take this man seriously as a contender for the Presidency? Well, part of it is just playing the game. Conflict promotes newspapers and broadcast time, which in turn sells beer and underarm deodorant. The press plays along with the boomlet not because they take it seriously but because it serves their own interests. If a genuine possibility of getting elected were necessary for press coverage, the name “Al Sharpton” and the word “President” would NEVER appear in the same sentence in the media. Edwards’ real chances are negligibly better than Sharpton’s.

Besides, Edwards is not really running for President. He’s running for Vice President. The way people who don’t have the horses to be President run for that office is to run knowing that they will lose, but hoping to make a name for themselves. They hope to get chosen as Vice President so they can stand in the corner holding the hat of the man who is President, and then get the job later on their own.

The only person who has ever actually run for Vice President, and asked to appear on the New Hampshire ballot that way, was Henry Cabot Lodge. Anyone remember him? Let’s not always see the same hands. Anyone who actually thinks of himself as a Vice President is too inconsequential to deserve even that menial job. Recall the comment of my friend and client, Gene McCarthy, about Mondale: “Walter Mondale has the soul of a Vice President.” Mark Twain touched on the same theme when he said, “There were two brothers. One went to sea; the other became Vice President. Nothing was ever heard of either of them, again.”

But why are any parts of the Democrat Party taking Edwards seriously, as a candidate even for Vice President? The first reason is the Party has been Clintonized. They will seriously consider any candidate who looks like he or she can win the next election, no questions asked. Not only is a sense of ethics not required, it is a drawback. Witness my classmate, colleague and former friend Joe Lieberman, who had to perform an ethical lobotomy on himself, removing his most pesky beliefs and morals, in order to be an acceptable second banana to Al Gore.

Speaking of Al Gore, he is almost certain to be the Democratic candidate in 2004. The reason is not that he can win. The reason is that he won’t lose as badly as a Michael Dukakis or George McGovern. Unless the War on Terrorism goes extremely badly, President Bush WILL be reelected. Recall that Franklin D. Roosevelt was reelected once when World War II was going badly. Early on, America suffered almost unrelenting setbacks. The same happened with Abraham Lincoln’s reelection when the Union Armies had suffered mostly defeats.

Americans have a habit of not trying to change horses in the middle of a stream. In peacetime, anything can happen for a variety of reasons to turn a sitting President into a one-termer. But not in wartime.

The election of 2004 is one in which the Democrats need a self-sacrificing lamb. They need someone who will genuinely believe, in the face of hard evidence to the contrary, that he will win. They need someone who will turn out the remaining fire-breathing, yellow-dog Democrats, so their other candidates down the ballot will not be slaughtered for Senate, House, Governorships, state legislatures and the like.

Al Gore offers the precise qualities of energy, self-delusion, and the appearance of adequacy that are needed. He will run hard with all his energies. He will promote the same tired ideas that no one cares about anyway. And he will lose, but not be slaughtered. That’s all the Democrats can reasonably expect in 2004.

And John Edwards? His real hope is to edge out the other wannabes and get the Veep slot. No one in the history of America has ever been elected President, or defeated for President, because of his choice of a Veep. Witness both Nixon (with Spiro Agnew) and Coolidge (with Warren Harding). Therefore, a Veep who runs in a failed campaign can walk away from the wreckage without a scratch and presumably take over the leadership of his or her party after that election. Witness Walter Mondale after Carter went down in flames.

Will Hillary! try to get the Veep slot instead? That is extremely unlikely. Her ego would not fit into that job, not even with a shoehorn, a quart of Mazola, and an elastic waistband. She wants the Big Enchilada and nothing else. Fortunately, she is like Teddy Kennedy – sufficiently damaged goods (at her own hands) that she will never get it. Her Chappaquiddick was not a single event, but an Administration.

She may have beaten all the raps legally, but unless she can get the majority of the American people to pardon her, she won’t get the job. We haven’t pardoned Teddy, even after 30 years. I don’t think we will ever pardon Hillary! She, like him, is destined to stay in the Senate as a representative for life of a state that ought to know better. But I digress.

The main reason I wrote this column is to make clear the same thing about attitudes in the Tar Heel State that some residents of the Razorback State made clear in 1992 and 1996. We may have elected John Edwards to a major position, like they did Bill Clinton. But we know that he’s a slick piece of work and not to be trusted to cross the street and change a ten dollar bill. I’ve often said that of the majority of trial lawyers I’ve encountered over the years.

To John Edwards, Congress is just like the court system -- a giant cash register. Push the right keys and KA-CHING, out comes money or power, all you can use, at least until you develop a taste for even more. People like that don’t belong in public office. Not in the Senate. Not as President or Vice President. Not even as dogcatcher.

Feel free to share this column with your friends and family around the country. Note what a veteran Arkansas politician said in 1992, “Bill Clinton would rather climb a tree to tell a lie, than stand on the ground to tell the truth.” John Edwards has the same tendency; he’s just not as good at it. He’s already been caught at it a couple times.

Not enough people listened to the warnings about Clinton. I don’t want anyone to say they weren’t warned this time around, as John Edwards pursues whatever political career he can get away with.

ping to y'all. Just think about it. President John Edwards and Giddy Dolt as our senior Senator. Makes we want to pull a Baldwin and leave the country!!

I saw Edwards with Tim Russert this morning. He's too slick. Not as good a liar as Clinton but slick none the less. Biggest anchor around his neck: he's a trial lawyer but does not refer to himself as a trial lawyer. Russert asked him straight out and Edwards made mentioned that he was proud that he's represented people in need. Pshaw! No gonads for this slick good looker. His M.O. is not to refer to the trial lawyer association until people have a chance to get to like him cause of his charm. Like I said, too too slick and we've had quite enough slickness, thank you very much.

NC Ping! (Thanks for the ping billbears)

Edwards Alert.

Great job Congressman Billybob.

MKM

The South has foisted several worthless presidents off on this country. The liberal north saw fit to vote for them en masse, so I guess one could say those rednecks put the boots to those northern socialists in a big way.

Edwards reminds me of another power seeker, as was that peanut shucker, Jimmy Carter.

When the Dems polled themselves on who should be their candidate Edwards came in LAST with 1%, who was ahead of him? Al Sharptongue with 2%, John Edwards is a FRAUD perpetrated upon the Dem sheep by the Dem Party! Let drawling pretty boy go for it! I don't mind a bit if President Bush is President again!

I really had to laugh when Edwards was shown the poll results that showed him at 1%, below Al Sharpton, and he acted like he was pleased. LOL!

Feel free to share this column with your friends and family around the country.

Dang right I will! This is one beautiful piece of writing. Outstanding!

I see a lot of the same characteristics as Clinton in Edwards. He's slick, relatively unknown, and with burning ambition to be our "leader."

Having said that, I don't think America likes trial lawyers, and they're sure not going to pick one over George W Bush.

Someone more witty than myself said that Edward's reminded him of a Ken doll (Barbie's boyfriend). Just a little too good-looking and slick to be real.

I agree that Edward's a junior version of Clinton. As former Senator Kerry said, Clinton is an unusually good liar, unusually good. But Edward's not that good...yet.

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