Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Choosing to do Something Useful with Your Life

The real story about John Edwards is not that he has left the race for the White House. In Nedra Pickler's report for Associated Press, the real story emerges through a couple of paragraphs about half-way down the page:

Edwards planned to announce his campaign was ending with his wife and three children at his side. Then he planned to work with Habitat for Humanity at the volunteer-fueled rebuilding project Musicians' Village, the adviser said.

With that, Edwards' campaign will end the way it began 13 months ago _ with the candidate pitching in to rebuild lives in a city still ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. Edwards embraced New Orleans as a glaring symbol of what he described as a Washington that didn't hear the cries of the downtrodden.

Yesterday I heard one of the guests on Democracy Now make the observation that Edwards was the only contender in the primary process who used the word "poverty" in his speeches. These two paragraphs demonstrate Edwards' decision that it is more important to do something about poverty than to be the lone voice talking about it in a political process that has reduced the phrase "public servant" to a bad joke. This means that my choice has now been narrowed to two candidates in the California Primary, both of whom received a Chutzpah of the Week award for disregarding the people's business through their absence from the Senate floor, choosing, instead, to spend that time on the campaign trail. Now that Edwards no longer holds nor seeks public office, he seems more intent on doing the people's business than any of those who are still "inside the system!"

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