Analysis
Edwards scoring with politics of hope

By Linda Feldmann
The Christian Science Monitor

	ELISE AMENDOLA / AP Presidential hopeful John Edwards smiles during an encounter with 3-year-old Leah Papadopoulos Metivier during a campaign stop yesterday in Nashua, N.H.
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For now, that pitch has served John Edwards well and earned the North Carolina senator close scrutiny by New Hampshire Democrats after his surging second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses. But campaign analysts warn that Edwards has to be careful not to oversell his image as Mr. Positive.

Campaigns are by definition a lively public dialogue, and the higher a candidate rises in the polls, the more he will be challenged — and forced to fight back.

"People are misreading this Edwards phenomenon," says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Point No. 1: Although Edwards did not attack in advertising and speeches, he did attack in debates, coming back hard at former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean over his Confederate flag comment and at Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri over charges on the trade issue.

Point No. 2: Edwards has been able to lie back and avoid attacking the front-runners, because others were doing the dirty work for him. Some analysts say Dean and Gephardt seriously damaged their candidacies in Iowa by going so hard after each other, allowing Edwards and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts to overtake them.

As a highly successful trial lawyer before his election to the Senate five years ago, Edwards is a shrewd tactician. For him, sunny optimism will never be mistaken for empty-headedness. But, analysts say, he also needs to understand that for his candidacy to keep thriving, he is going to have to be negative at times about his opponents without appearing overly so.

Attacks over policy positions and voting records are fair game; in fact, voters rely on that information. Personal attacks, or anything seen as unfair — such as an ad by a group called Americans for Jobs, Healthcare and Progressive Values that ran briefly last month linking Dean and Osama bin Laden — are out of bounds.

"What Edwards has picked up on is the deep sense of retreat among Americans from politics and public life," says Richard Harwood, president of the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation. "He's got a dilemma on his hands, if he wants to be true to his word. Playing with hope is like playing with fire. If you do not fulfill your promise, you will further deepen people's sense of cynicism."

Generally, negative messages get greater play in the media than positive ones, and that may explain why it took Edwards longer to start attracting attention.

"It is the negativity bias," says Spencer Tinkham, professor of advertising and public relations at the University of Georgia. "Negative information inherently has a greater impact; it is remembered longer. Positive messages take a lot of repetition and multiple exposures to sink in."

In New Hampshire, where the candidates are in full sprint to Tuesday's Democratic primary, voters expect a level of combativeness in the campaign.

"To an extent, we still have that Yankee mentality of being independent and being feisty," says Katherine Mitchell of Hopkinton, N.H., attending a Kerry event in Concord, N.H. "Nobody wants a lot of mudslinging, but it's important to clarify distinctions between candidates."

In Greenville, S.C. — where Edwards campaigned yesterday, looking ahead to the state's Feb. 3 primary — many saw his performance in Iowa as proof he is electable.

Joe Adams, an attorney who drove down from Asheville, N.C., said Edwards's optimistic message doesn't play as well on TV as in person.

But in small groups and one-on-one, Adams says Edwards is "unbeatable."

Part of it is a genuine belief that "America can do better." But his message also epitomizes a political idealism that harks back to Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.

"He really believes in his message of hope and optimism," Adams says.

For his part, Edwards vowed to "cut lobbyists off at the knees" and he riffed on a theme of "two Americas": two school systems, two tax systems, two classes. He also said the South has a "huge responsibility" to address racial inequalities.

"Cynics didn't build this country," said Edwards, a millworker's son who clawed his way through public schools and worked through college unpacking trucks. "Optimists built this country. ... I believe in the politics of hope, the politics of what's possible."

Edwards' optimistic message is resonating with voters because of a disconnect many feel with Washington, said one Edwards supporter from Greenville:

"It's like 10 percent of the people control Washington and the other 90 percent of us sit at home with no power to change it."

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