John Edwards: from textile-mill parents, a poised persuader

Last October, at the height of baseball playoff season - and the race for the Democratic presidential nomination - John Edwards was asked which team he favored, the Yankees or the Red Sox. The first-term senator from North Carolina laughed.

"I'm not answering that one! No way!" Then, from the front seat of his van on a campaign swing through Iowa, he answered anyway: "The other night I was rooting for the Red Sox in Game 5, but I was in New Hampshire at the time and I was surrounded by Red Sox fans. But it was kinda exciting to see the Red Sox do well."

Little did he know that was the "right" answer, now that he is the running mate of the presumed Democratic nominee, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts. Maybe, as an up-by-the-bootstraps former trial lawyer who was a self-described defender of the weak against large corporations, Senator Edwards has an affinity for underdogs. But he is nothing if not ambitious. And even though, all during primary season, Edwards insisted he wasn't in it to land the No. 2 spot on the ticket, that's where he is - and, he now says, "thrilled" to be there.

Edwards's unbridled ambition - marked by a presidential campaign that seemed to start almost the moment he took his Senate seat, his first foray into politics - seemed almost a hindrance to his selection by Kerry. Like George W. Bush, whose running mate, Dick Cheney, had given up his own presidential aspirations, Kerry may have preferred someone a little more seasoned, a little less in a hurry. And he may have hesitated over Edwards's charisma, an area where he clearly outshines Kerry.

But in selecting Edwards, Kerry is also showing his own self-confidence - saying, in essence, that he can hold his own against Bush on defense and national security, and didn't need the credentials of a Gen. Wesley Clark, a Sen. John McCain, or a Sen. Bob Graham to beef up his ticket. Instead, he's putting by his side someone who can aid his ticket in other ways, analysts say: a proven fundraiser, quick on his feet, and a man who knows how to sway voters as surely as he used to sway juries. Edwards also has that Southern ability to campaign anywhere in the US, which Northerners find more difficult.

Finishing his sixth year as a senator, Edwards's political record isn't long. At the very start of his term, he was pressed into service as one of President Clinton's three Senate defenders during impeachment. Edwards also managed the floor debate on the Patients' Bill of Rights, legislation that eventually bogged down, but his performance won him praise from the Republican Senator McCain, who noted the North Carolinian's ability to make the complex understandable.

"Edwards really isn't running on his Senate record, he is running on the fact that he is a fresh face with an attractive bio that is the American dream," says Peter Feaver, a political scientist at Duke University in Durham, N.C. "He is extremely wealthy, but he started very poor and he presents that in a compelling way. He looks good on TV, and that can't be discounted."

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