Did John Edwards vote for the Iraq war because Bob Shrum told him to? According to Shrum's devastating new memoir, he did:
Shrum went on advising Edwards for several years, including as Edwards was contemplating his vote on the fall 2002 Iraq war resolution. In the one passage of the book already widely leaked, Shrum recounts how he and other political advisers pushed Edwards into a vote for the resolution that Edwards–and, even more so, his wife, Elizabeth–didn't want to cast. The episode didn't make Shrum look great. But the real damage is to Edwards, who comes across as a cipher taking orders from his handlers. As Shrum puts it: "[H]e was the candidate and if he was really against the war it was up to him to stand his ground. He didn't."
The description of Edwards as "a Clinton who hadn't read the books" seems to me to be doubly damning, especially now that there's a Barack who has read plenty and has got at all the neophyte ambition that was part of the trial lawyer's charm the first time around the caucus.
The seriousness of the Edwards candidacy is well near the point of total flame-out: Forget the $400 haircut. More symbolic of his phony populism is this latest story about his receiving $55,000 to speak at UC Davis on the subject of poverty, the "greatest moral crisis" facing the country. (Never mind about an Islamist enemy that wants to destroy rich and poor alike.)
Two Americas, all right: Me and y'all.