Gary Hart & John Edwards: Two Self-Destructive Populists

"Gary Hart was the presumed Democratic presidential candidate in the spring of 1987 when the Miami Herald reported that rumors of his “womanizing” were true. The ensuing scandal over his extramarital affair with a woman named Donna Rice ended his candidacy. Yet according to Gail Sheehy, a journalist who covered Hart for Vanity Fair in the 1980s, the real story was bigger than just one affair—it was about Hart’s fundamental character, and whether a man like him should be president.

Stories of Hart’s affairs had circulated long before his scandal broke in the spring of 1987 (those weeks are depicted in the new film The Front Runner, starring Hugh Jackman as Hart). The rumors had trailed him the first time he campaigned to be the Democratic presidential candidate in 1984, and even stretched back to his time as the national campaign director for George McGovern’s 1972 presidential bid.

“The wife of a very prominent Duke political scientist told me that he would just take every one of the college girls who volunteered [at the McGovern campaign] to bed,” Sheehy says. “And the next day, she would be hanging on her chance to talk to him, and he would walk right past her as if he’d never seen her before. He did that over and over and over again... 

From History

Gary Hart: Where's the beef? 

"The phrase became associated with the 1984 United States presidential election. During primaries in the spring of 1984, when the commercial was at its height of popularity, Democratic candidate and former Vice President Walter Mondale used the phrase to sum up his arguments that program policies championed by his rival, Senator Gary Hart, were insubstantial, beginning with a March 11, 1984, televised debate at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta prior to the New York and Pennsylvania primaries... 

From Wikipedia

"During a Democratic primary debate in 1984, Gary Hart was criticized by some of his competitors for the nomination for not offering serious,  substantive policy proposals."

Source:Face The Nation with a look at U.S. Senator Gary Hart (Democrat, Colorado) back in 1984.

From Face The Nation

From TIME Magazine back in 2004 about John Edwards populism: 

"When John Edwards set out on his first solo campaign swing last week as John Kerry’s Veep choice, he showed evidence of a quiet makeover. The candidate, who during the primaries rarely attacked his opponents and then almost never by name, ripped the White House for ducking responsibility for the missing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The next day he said Kerry’s health-care plan was “dramatically different from whatever health-care plan George Bush has; I haven’t seen one yet.” And Edwards insisted that while he and Kerry were meeting with average voters, “the President has been going to ticketed events, where they control who goes in.”

But if Edwards is revving up his partisan rhetoric, he’s also tamping down his populist style. He has stopped thrusting his thumbs wildly in the air when crowds cheer him, adopting a slower, statesmanlike one-thumb move. And while “hope,” “optimism” and the “politics of the possible” are still favorites, he’s dropped the “two Americas” speech that wowed Democrats during the primaries. He sometimes even skips saying he’s the son of a millworker. Edwards has also learned deference. When a New Orleans woman asked him what he could do to protect her pension, he told her the campaign didn’t have a specific plan but promised to “tell John we had this conversation.” When you’re No. 2, sometimes that’s the most you can do." 

Source:The Denver Post with a look at U.S. Senator John Edwards (Democrat, North Carolina) back in 2004.

From TIME Magazine

Fro what I wrote about John Edwards last week: 

"What John Kerry gave the Kerry-Edwards Campaign in 2004 in professionalism, Edwards gave that campaign in personality. Edwards was 51 at the time, but look like and acted like he could be 40 with his boyish looks and fun personality. Which hurt him in the Vice Presidential debate, because he looked like Dick Cheney's son in that debate learning the ropes when it came to foreign policy and national security. Even though Vice President Cheney and Senator Edwards are only 12 years apart in real life. 

John Edwards didn't cost John Kerry the 2004 election. Kerry blew that by not spending more money that they had in the bank in Ohio and perhaps Florida as well, that they could've put into advertising and getting the vote out. And Edwards did well enough, was so likable, in 2004, that he became a leading Democratic contender for 2007-08, especially since he was now out of the U.S. Senate can could spend all his time on campaigning and organizing. 

Without then Senator Barack Obama, who knows, maybe John Edwards beats Senator Hillary Clinton. I doubt that because Edwards sort of had a Gary Hart "where's the beef" problem (to paraphrase Walter Mondale) where he could give a great speech and talk about what we need to do as a country, but without offering any details as far as how we would accomplish what he's talking about. A John Edwards speech could be like a bowl of tomato soup... but without the tomato. It could be very empty. Or like drinking a nonalcoholic beer: what's the point... 

From The New Democrat

To be completely frank: (or to be completely joe, or tom, or someone else) I'm not sure Gary Hart or John Edwards qualify as "populists", at least in the full sense. But they both had those roots. 

To Gary Hart's credit, similar to Jimmy Carter in the mid and late 1970s, he understood America well enough (at least politically) that the country was moving right. That it was no longer interested in the next big, centralized, Federal, social program and agenda of more federal programs, and looking for more tax increases. 

But at the same time, there was an America, especially in the Democratic Party, that was looking for a leader to speak the needs and concerns of average Americans and minorities of all backgrounds. That's where Senator Hart's populism came in. Just because you work for Senator George McGovern (the Bernie Sanders of his time) in the late 1960s and early 1970s, doesn't mean you run as as McGovernite for President in the mid-1980s, when Americans were starting to love capitalism and liberal democracy again. 

Senator Hart wanted to be the voice of hard-working, average Americans and minorities. But knew that some big government, democratic socialist agenda, wasn't political feasible in the mid 1980s and probably not the right approach on policy grounds either. And to Walter Mondale's to credit for being the quick-witted, snappy, political partisan that he was, saw Senator Hart was big on this sort of populist idealism rhetorically, but saw an opening to try to pinpoint what were the Senator's exact positions on the key issues that he was talking about. So that's why his "Where's the beef" line so well-placed and well-timed. 

And as far as Senator John Edwards: democratic populist, rhetorically, but he had a "where's the beef" issue as well. His famous speech about the "2 America's", very similar to Governor Mario Cuomo's "2 America's" speech from the 1984 Democratic National Convention: 

They both talked about an America where people who are born rich and never having to worry about being able to get and afford anything that they would ever need to live well in America, as well as the ability to afford all the luxuries that this country can be provide. 

As well as the America that they grew up in where everyday life was a struggle for both of them, everyday. But you ask Senator Edwards what are his policy proposals to create that 1 America where everyone can thrive and you would struggle to get anything substantive from him.

And the reason why I talk about both Democrats in the same post (Gary Hart and John Edwards) because they had a lot in common: 

2 handsome, youngish, looking, middle-age man, 

good personalities, very likable... Gary Hart was compared with Robert F. Kennedy and John Edwards with Bill Clinton. 

Both were basically JFK/Clinton New Democrats ideologically, who were well to the right of the McGovernites, but definitely to the left of the Joe Manchin's and perhaps even the Blue Dogs in Congress. 

Both would've had very long careers in American politics and perhaps became President at some point, had it not have been for their sexual indiscretions. They're in the "what if" club in American politics because of their lack of discipline with their personal lives. And are both very interesting to me. 

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