Posted on 07/10/2004 12:08:15 AM PDT by lainie
Chronicling a campaign day is akin to panning for gold. The shiny nuggets that reporters prize are those rare moments of spontaneity discovered amid the dross of synthetic sound bites and predictable partisan platitudes.
That's why the media stars of Wednesday's rollout of the Democratic ticket were the younger children of John and Elizabeth Edwards: Jack, a thumb-sucking, free-spirited, 4-year-old, and Emma Claire, a 6-year-old nervously pretending to be mature for the occasion. Jack and Emma Claire's antics were the one element in the political tableau that not even the most cynical Republican could believe was scripted.
Running for president has become as much of a family affair as The Brady Bunch. That is why it didn't take a public-relations genius to bring together the blended family of John Kerry and Teresa Heinz Kerry to serve as a backdrop for the introduction of the Edwardses to general-election voters.
As the two couples on the Democratic ticket strolled hand-in-hand onto a grassy meadow at the Heinz baronial farm in Pittsburgh, followed by their children, it almost seemed like a scene from The Sound of Music. In fact, a jokester in the press corps started softly singing, "Climb every mountain ..."
In novelistic terms, the Kerry and Edwards clans encompass almost every tragic and joyous element in contemporary family life. There was divorce (Kerry's) and too much death: The Edwards' eldest son, Wade, was killed in a 1996 car accident and Heinz Kerry's first husband, Republican Sen. John Heinz, perished in a 1991 plane crash. On the other side of the life ledger, the Kerrys found second-chance happiness in their middle years and the Edwardses added to their family (Emma Claire and Jack) at an age when some of their contemporaries were becoming grandparents.
Families have always been a convenient prop for politicians trying to humanize their images. The classic example was scandal-plagued Richard Nixon's 1952 "Checkers" speech, in which he lovingly described the cocker spaniel that had been given to his young daughters, Tricia and Julie. No presidential candidate invoked the rhetoric of family more fervently than Bill Clinton, and no political marriage has ever been subjected to such public scrutiny.
But there is a reason beyond voyeurism for Americans to be intensely curious about the family lives of candidates for national office. Voters instinctively understand that would-be presidents and vice presidents cannot be judged by voting records and policy positions alone. That elusive quality called character is an important element in any campaign, and a candidate's family provides a window on these internalized values. So in a real sense, the personal is political.
Unlike many of his rivals for the 2004 Democratic nomination, John Edwards never had that breakthrough moment when his smiling face graced the covers of news magazines. That, of course, is likely to change when the next editions of the magazines come out Monday. But while he was familiar to Democratic primary voters, Edwards and his family were never, until now, the subjects of an all-out media frenzy.
Covering the campaign last summer, I vividly remember Emma Claire's and Jack's first campaign appearances during a bus tour of Iowa. Jack, then 3, found it difficult to comprehend why his father's campaign bus would not immediately stop when he spied a playground out the window. And I recall Emma Claire asking in a puzzled tone, "Daddy, what's a fundraiser?"
But that family drama played out on the small stages of Iowa and New Hampshire. Now Edwards and, in particular, his wife, Elizabeth, are being introduced to a national audience. Elizabeth, who laughingly calls herself the "un-Barbie," can and probably will be portrayed as a modern-day everywoman. This former bankruptcy attorney, who met her husband in law school, is a doting mother, accomplished public speaker and adroit political adviser. But in her public role, she also exudes warmth, accessibility and just enough hints of vulnerability to differentiate herself from the standard-issue blandness of political wives like Laura Bush and poised paragons of perfection like Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Still, it is easy to imagine how the press and TV onslaught in the months ahead could turn Elizabeth Edwards and her younger children into clichés. Interviewers will hunger after the raw emotion inherent in getting the wife of the vice presidential candidate to talk about the death of her 16-year-old son. Late-night comedy show will concoct skits around Jack and Emma Claire bedeviling Kerry and their father. These are problems inherent in our media culture: Real-life tragedies are reshaped to fit the expectations of television audiences, and spontaneity becomes fodder for mockery.
Watching Kerry and Edwards, along with their wives, share stages at outdoor rallies in Cleveland and Dayton on Wednesday, these joint appearances quickly became transformed into a political buddy movie. They like each other. They touch each other. They're all best friends. This is now the traditional Democratic style, popularized by Bill and Hillary Clinton and Al and Tipper Gore during their sometimes-gooey 1992 campaign bus trips. This family-friendly politics may work politically. But if this instant intimacy becomes too cloying, it might make cynics nostalgic for the seething, just-beneath-the-surface enmities of ticket mates like John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson in 1960.
POISED PARAGON OF PERFECTION?????
lol I saw the same line. Funny, huh!
Kerry, Edwards show public affection
"We make a great couple, ladies and gentlemen," Kerry joked as New York donors cracked up.
"I have a man, Whoopi." Kerry regarding Edwards...
I'm sure that was a typo; they had to have meant "POISONED".
lol
Every time I think the press can't get anymore ridiculous, they manage to prove me wrong. What's next -- Bill Clinton, paragon of virtue? LOL
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.