By Mark Leibovich
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 22, 2003; Page C01
John Edwards Tries to Rally His Bid by Going One on One
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa
This is John Edwards doing rage:
"George Bush goes down to that big ranch of his, with that big belt buckle," he says. "He pretends to know what it's like for you and me." Edwards's voice eases to a slow, dripping disdain. One imagines him in his previous career as a plaintiff's lawyer, representing, he says, "ordinary people who play by the rules." He is indignant, theatrical and successful -- in courtrooms as on the stump. He draws big applause from a weekday crowd of 200 at a small community center here. He has 5-year-old girls booing pharmaceutical lobbyists.
One of the striking things about seeing Edwards up close is the degree of raw anger he evinces in his speeches -- and the level of anger he elicits from his audiences toward the president. It's not uncommon for presidential candidates such as Howard Dean, Dick Gephardt or John Kerry to attack Bush's performance with contempt and ridicule.
But Edwards's anger seems more stomach-level. He is prone to attack Bush not just for what he has done in office, but for who he is and where he comes from. Several times a day, Edwards will dismiss the president as "a man who only values wealth and money."
"It's the way he looks at the world," Edwards says of Bush. "This is his world, this is what he knows. He's working for a handful of insiders. People like Halliburton," he says of the energy company formerly led by Vice President Cheney. The president's priorities, Edwards says, are offensive to people "who grew up the way I did."
Edwards, 50, was raised in a procession of Southern mill towns. He got into fights. "This kind of fight," he says, holding his right fist to a reporter's nose. It was, he says, "very much the law of the jungle. . . . If you couldn't protect yourself, they'd run all over you."
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61741-2003Oct21.html ******
Excellent, moving article about John Reid Edwards and the fight in him.
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