once upon a time we had another political lightweight running for president of this country. he was a handsome guy with a nice-looking family. he made his great fortune looking out for the downtrodden while punishing big, bad corporations. only this man could save america from continuing to be the unfeeling monolith it had become under bush 43. america swooned over this guy too, at least until they started paying attention to the obvious holes in his resume.

perhaps you remember this man — i’m referring to former senator and Democratic VP nominee john edwards.

he’s still interested in being president, in case you were wondering about that. someday soon we could all be hearing once again about the two americas, and how these inequalities are the fault of big oil and evil corporations. i can’t tell you how much i’m looking forward to hearing that speech. it always warms the heart to hear proposals for punishing rich people and corporations, suggestions that will somehow exclude senator edwards and his former partner in crime john kerry.

anyway, the shrill shill chris matthews of hardball with chris matthews fame just happened to invite our hero on his college tour. this was home base for edwards, as the show was broadcast from UNC-Chapel Hill. it started out with a discussion of iraq.

MATTHEWS: How many more months of this would you support if you were president now? I know it‘s—you haven‘t announced yet, formally, but with two more years of this administration, should we spend the whole next two years grinding this thing down to its inevitable conclusion and have a couple thousand more American guys killed, another 100,000 Iraqis?

J. EDWARDS: Well, we‘ve got to change and we ought to change dramatically. I mean, I have been saying that for a year or more, that we ought to have a significant drawdown of American presence there to send the signal that we are not going to be there forever and we‘re not there for oil. The president of the United States needs to say that very directly, because the rest of the world does not believe it. They don‘t believe it.

MATTHEWS: He‘s saying the opposite. He‘s talking about permanent bases over there.

J. EDWARDS: That‘s right, and he‘s wrong about that. We have to say the opposite, which is what the Baker Study Group said, we‘re not going to have permanent bases in Iraq and we‘ve got to start pulling our troops out.

MATTHEWS: We‘ve got 140,000 people over there now. How many would you withdraw fairly quickly?

J. EDWARDS: Forty to fifty thousand.

he didn’t answer the question. the question was about a specific timetable for determining whether we can achieve our current goals in iraq or not. it was probably wise not to answer this question, since i’m not sure there is a good answer to it. john edwards simply repeats the tired mantra that we must change our policy, and says that we should significantly reduce our troop presence in iraq. he also says that we should withdraw forty to fifty thousand ‘fairly quickly’, although he still doesn’t say when that could be.

if senator edwards is operating under the assumption that his strategy is what the ISG proposed, he needs to re-read it. it was very clear about the consequences of pulling troops out ‘fairly quickly’, and did not recommend this. the report did make some rather unrealistic assumptions about syria and iran and many other neighboring countries, so i hope that edwards is not completely endorsing the findings of the ISG. it does seem clear, however, that he doesn’t believe we can achieve the goal of a stable iraq. whether that’s true or not, troop withdrawals on the level edwards is suggesting could only hurt our ability to achieve this goal.

i’m not criticizing senator edwards for not having a comprehensive iraq plan. i haven’t seen many of those kind of plans out there from any of the other potential candidates either. in fact, i do agree with him on one small point…that the president must change the current strategy if we plan to stabilize iraq.

here’s my concern about senator edwards and his presidential ambitions. i think that our next president should be someone who has a firm grasp on foreign policy, based on what is happening in the world today with terrorism and potential future skirmishes with iran, syria, russia, and north korea. inexperience or shallow knowledge in this area should disqualify someone from the presidency IMO. john edwards doesn’t have a resume that includes this kind of knowledge and experience, and he hasn’t added anything significant to that resume since the 2004 election.

one student in the hardball audience asked edwards about that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, Senator Edwards. If hypothetically you were to be running for president, what would you say to critics who think that you don‘t have enough governing experience on a national scale?

J. EDWARDS: I would say that I should be tested on that. I think that anybody who is considering voting for me ought to hear me talk about what I think needs done in America, what I think America needs to be doing in the world and they ought to listen to both the depth and the substance of what I‘m saying and decide whether they believe I have both the personal qualities and the vision, the substantive vision for America and the rest of the world, that the president of the United States needs. If I run for president, I‘m prepared to be tested on that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I guess I was getting at more on was kind of the foreign policy aspect. As a senator for two years, did you have enough experience in the foreign policy realm to kind of comfort the American people at a time where foreign policy is really at the forefront?

J. EDWARDS: It‘s a really good question, an important question.

I think that the answer is, first of all, I was in the Senate six years, not two years. No, it‘s OK.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Communications major, sorry.

J. EDWARDS: You know, some of the rest of us make mistakes like that, too. I was there for six years and then subsequent to the presidential campaign in 2004, my time has been spent, a big chunk of it, has been doing work overseas. The home audience just saw me traveling through Uganda, I‘ve been doing humanitarian work. I spent time speaking in the Middle East, speaking in the Middle East, in India, in Asia, in Europe, speaking, meeting with leaders. And I think that has been enormously valuable in terms of adding to the depth and maturity of my view about what‘s happening in the world.

i think it’s terrific that edwards is doing all this humanitarian work. more politicians should follow his example. it certainly is worthwhile to meet and greet foreign leaders, but that doesn’t automatically give you an understanding of why countries act the way they do. we need a president who understands the threats we face and someone who can effectively threaten the bad guys. i’m still not convinced that john edwards is that kind of leader, or even that he could be that kind of leader.

do the republicans have someone with this kind of experience / knowledge in their pool of potential candidates? maybe. the only one impressing me so far with his depth of knowledge is the guy who probably can’t win the nomination.

tags: ’08 election, john edwards, chris matthews, hardball