Reply #13: If Gandhi had been a murderer and rapist who served his time [View All]

[AP]

and wanted to run for president, I would say, Gandhi, you're a great man, and you'd do great things, and you've paid your debt to society, but you're probably not the right symbol for America right now.

What we're talking about is partly the power of symbols. I think Edwards is a powerful symbol of what needs to be fixed in America.

Furthermore, biography and experience are part of a coherent logic about a candidate. I grant that candidates like Nixon and Reagan and DeLay have biographies which probably obfuscated what they were really about, and the Kennedys and FDR had biographies that belied what they believed in (yet, still had life experiences that explained why they weren't class loyalists).

Think of the power of a candidate who has the complete, logical total nexus of policy, experience and biography.

And why are we talking about the children of these candidates? That's my whole point: inheritied privilege is a bad example. It's just outrageous that this issue is framed in terms of, "Edwards is a decent guy, so shouldn't his three kids be decent politicians some day?" Ugh. That argument just makes me sick to my stomach.