Wednesday night was John Edwards' big night. But it was not his best one.
After Edwards' speech, I ran into one of his aides, who reminded me that the first rule of speechwriting is, “First, do no harm.” And by that standard, the text Edwards worked with was a rousing success -- moving, direct, colloquial, and right on track with the evening's theme of security. But harm, it should be recalled, can come in many forms, and not only through what is said directly. Another form of harm comes when images and words are out of sync, and when the image undermines the text.
Edwards' words may have been burnished to an unassailable brightness Wednesday night, but nothing could disguise the fact that Edwards looked tired. His voice had been threatening to give out earlier in the week, and aides worried that he wouldn't even last on Wednesday as long as he did. On the podium, he licked his lips between phrases while his eyes flashed a calculated look. Sometimes, he made a kind of sour-lemon face, like something was paining him. Conscious of the need to finish during the prime-time television hour, he didn't pause for applause to die away naturally and spoke rapidly over the crowd, making him hard to hear at moments and also making him seem a bit disconnected from the audience.
I focused on watching him from the convention hall floor on the giant TV screen behind his head -- really watching him -- and not just listening to his words. To my dismay, even as he trotted out some of his best lines and most constant images from the primary season -- The grease on their faces! The lint in their hair! The mother at her table! -- the buoyant happiness and ease that made him irresistible last winter were only intermittently on display. For each moment when it seemed he'd finally gotten into his groove, such as when talking about the “two Americas” and how we must speak of race everywhere, there were others when his presentation fell flat.
After a week of speculation about whether or not Barack Obama could measure up to all the hype that's surrounding him (he did), I was unpleasantly reminded of all the times Edwards has not measured up to his star billing in the past. His unimpressive Meet the Press performance of
2002
. His months of flat polling and fine but bland speeches before his last-minute meteoric ascent in the primaries. The way it took him months and months to figure out how to grasp and hold the attention of voters. The fact that despite all the hype about his oratorical skills and the two-Americas speech -- which I praised in January, like many others -- he was still beaten in every state but South Carolina by the man whom commentators continue to suggest he overshadows.
After half a decade of being a media darling, this dynamic of high expectations followed by disappointing performances followed by expectation-besting outcomes has recurred so frequently in Edwards' short political career that it now has to be understood as part and parcel of his political identity. It is something that his staffers -- and he himself -- will have to figure out how to manage over the next three months, especially heading into the October 5 debate with Vice President Dick Cheney.
Edwards is not a true natural as a politician in the way that Bill Clinton was. He's a bit more of a studious and accomplished performer, one who takes time to get his set pieces right, but then pulls them off better than just about anybody. As Clinton has said of him, “He can talk an owl out of a tree.” By the time the media arrived in mid-January to hear Edwards' two-Americas speech in Iowa, he'd been giving it half a dozen times (or more) a day for close to two weeks. He'd had time to gauge audience reaction, tinker around the edges, add and subtract what worked and what didn't. And he'd had the preceding year to work up to it. He talked Iowa caucus-goers out of their trees, and the media swooned anew.
But the format of Wednesday night's speech required something novel. Many of the phrases in the presentation were culled from stump speeches past; others are likely to be part of stump speeches future; and some of the material was likely specific to the convention venue. Give Edwards another two weeks with this new speech and new material, said one of his aides, and you'll see that primary-season star again. That sounds about right.
In the end, though, what Edwards laid out in his speech will matter much more in the weeks ahead than will his performance Wednesday night. Edwards' words were striking. The most memorable line of the evening, Edwards' direct challenge to al-Qaeda -- “You cannot run. You cannot hide. We will destroy you.”-- struck me with particular force.
Edwards barely mentioned Iraq during his primary speeches, and he rarely mentioned terrorism. But with that formulation, he stepped across a line between the politician he had been and the one he may yet become. Which is to say, a leader in a time of war. For if Edwards is to be America's vice president during this time of threat and uncertainty, that is what he will have to be. He will have to be comfortable with the use of force. The power of American might will be deployed partly under his influence, and it will be among his responsibilities to protect the nation from harm. Men and women will die under his watch. Our nation will possibly face, foil, and weather attack.
It was easy in the primaries to focus on domestic issues, where the contrast with Republican values was so strong. But America's sworn enemies still stir outside our borders. “We are approaching the third anniversary of September 11,” said Edwards on Wednesday night, “and one thing I can tell you: When we're in office, it won't take three years to get the reforms in our intelligence that are necessary to keep the American people safe.”
The words are all there. Now all Edwards has to do is figure out how to say them.
Garance Franke-Ruta is a Prospect senior editor.
