It’s true, but it’s also rather negatively phrased.
When these problems exist is when American politics work best.
It is a suspiciously negative spin on the truth.
Why not just say he’s an attorney? Why invoke the conservative bogeyman “trial lawyer?”
Why not call him a one-term Senator instead of using the more negative “rookie?”
Why even bring up that he is “rich” (however the AP reporter defines that word)? Put his wealth up against that of Kerry, Bush and Cheney, and it would look pretty paltry. He is the least “rich” of the bunch. Probably by a very wide margin. Moreover, he earned his wealth by his own initiative. Can the other three say the same?
Great choice. I wish Edwards wouldn’t have bowed out of the running for the nomination quite so soon. Here in Iowa, people seemed to prefer Kerry only because he was viewed as more experienced; people at my caucus said Edwards was too young. (WTF?)
Edwards was asked in an interview months ago whether he’d accept a VP spot, and he said “I don’t want to be vice president, I want to be president.” 
(Haven’t got a cite, heard it on TV at caucus time.)
I’m starting to get excited about this now. I just hope Kerry’s team knows how to use him.
Larry King Live, around 8:15 or so central time that evening, IIRC.
As others have said, calling Shrub such terms in 2000 would have been accurate.
Why is this election different for you?
Kerry’s only nine years older (60 to 51), but he’s in his fourth term in the Senate to Edwards’s one and had been in politics before that… so maybe youth didn’t mean a lot, but experience makes sense. The age gap probably seemed bigger because Edwards looks younger than he is.
That’s one of those things you have to say.
I think Edwards was a good pick. Gephardt would have been a terrible choice. Not only is he a staunch protectionist (which is not a winning position outside of the rust belt), but he’s got about as much charisma as Kerry - close to none. The two of them together would have been dour and dourer.
But Edwards is young, dynamic, upbeat, and has a great speaking manner. He’ll help in the south, and he may be a good contrast to the dour Dick Cheney.
However, there are a few potential pitfalls, as I see it. First, Edwards may upstage Kerry. Kerry is just monotonous and dull. Edwards is dynamic. Second, Edwards needs some serious schooling. If Kerry has a decent campaign team, they’ll be drilling Edwards like crazy on the issues of the day. Edwards is a lawyer who came late to politics and has little experience. He’ll be easy to trip up on things like the names of leaders, important legislation, history, geography, and other topics. He’s already been caught in a few bad stumbles with not knowing the facts. So he’d better his the books, or Cheney will chew him up in the Vice Presidential debates.
Finally, Edwards is vulnerable for being a trial lawyer who has presided over some megabuck product liability cases. I’m sure the Republicans are going to be pouring over everything he’s said in court, looking for sleazy tactics, false claims, specious scientific claims, and the rest. Plus, Americans are skeptical of trial lawyers.
But there are no perfect candidates. Of the available field, Edwards was probably the best choice (although Evan Bayh probably would have been my pick).
shrugs Don’t know, I’m voting for Kerry/Edwards no matter what AP calls them. If they want to point out that they are both rich etc, they are welcome to. I think that the phrasing IS indeed negative, but also true enough.
Not to turn it around on you, but what phrasing would you prefer? “Wealthy first term senator and a former attorney”? There’s only so many ways to say it, even trying to be PC - he has money, he has one Senate term under his belt, and he used to be a trial lawyer. Maybe “Self-made millionaire, first term senator, and former lawyer”? Isn’t that a little pandering to him?
What’s so bad about a nice, neutral “wealthy, first-term Senator”?
That would indeed be pandering. Why is his money relevant at all? They’re all millionaires and that’s not exactly news. I think “First-term Senator and former attorney” would do fine.
Man, that was a totally unprofessional lead, wasn’t it? Did a junior republican with half-dry sheepskin write that shyte?
Can you imagine the following?
Kerry and Edwards will go up against the unservedly rich chimp Georage W. Bush, who stole the election in 2000, and heart-attack victim and plutocrat Dick (remember tricky “Dick” Nixon?) Cheney, said to be Bush’s puppeteer in chief.
Would make about the same impression.
I’m as liberal as the next guy, but I just don’t see the spin on this being that terribly evil. Negative, yes, but mildly. On the pH scale of political slurs, the description of Mr. Edwards is about a 6. It’ll sting if you put your hand in it too long, but it is hardly a condemnation.
I couldn’t describe Bush in any less hostile words by a good measure, though, so…
You’d think by now this nation would realize that having “exciting” and “folksy” candidates for President is not a good thing…
You support George W. Bush for four years and then throw out this? Oh, the irony!
…ready to embrace him as one of their own? 
In the end, that’s the one great thing about four years of Bush-Cheney; they’ve lowered the bar so far that anyone else seems like a major improvement by comparison.
Okay. Like Marley, I think you’re willfully avoiding my original point about Joe Kennedy. As I said, I’m sure it wouldn’t be difficult to find “sounder” sources attesting to the strings he pulled if you don’t like my first one. For the record though, the site I linked to draws much of its info, as stated on the page, from a book by Ronald Kessler, who I knew right off the top of my head to be a respected author of books on various aspects of the government- the CIA, FBI, and Congress, to name a few. Look him up. He’s neither conspiracy nut nor oppurtunist hack.
To be honest, I pretty much assumed that Joe Kennedy’s more-than-pivotal role in his son’s success in politics was common knowledge (?) It’s like asking me to back up the claim that William Randolph Hearst influenced the types of stories his newspapers printed. But hey. Like I said, I guess I’d be willing to find additional documentation for you to scrunch up your face at! Just let me know.
A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. That’s Paul Simon, by the way. (I can provide a cite for it, if necessary. . .?)
I think we should start a “Straight Dope Message Boards Irony of the Month Award”.
I hereby nominate **Sam’s ** comment.
And here’s why
This might even be big enough to win the “Straight Dope Message Boards Irony of the Year Award”.
Ha! The AP reporter who wrote that lead got smacked down. New version:
Slightly OT, but based upon my contacts with Kessler in the early 1980s, during his tenure at The Washington Post, I’d say that he is, definitely, an opportunist hack.
He would take a few bits of unrelated information, and weave them together into a lurid “exposé.” An insignificant typo in a financial report would be headlined as “Massive Fraud in Government!” If the agency at first maintained that the figure was accurate, the headline would read “Coverup by Officials!!!”
His assertions about Joe Kennedy may or may not be correct, but I’d want to see some corroboration.
Okayy, how about Sy Hersh? (Though maybe his credentials don’t impress a lot of folks here, either?) :rolleyes:
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/bookauth/shint.htm
*[Hersh writes that] Kennedy’s father brokered a deal with Sam Giancana, the head of the Chicago mob, in which the mob would force the unions under its control to vote for Kennedy in the 1960 election. Giancana expected that in return government surveillance of the mob would lessen after the election.
Hersh:* “The FBI produced a report for the Attorney General saying that the election had been stolen in Illinois. (Note: Before any good Dopers start wielding their electoral-vote-by-state statistics again like so many Crazy 88s, understand that no one is saying Illinois won him the election by itself; only that the Illinois count, like so many other elements of the campaign, was crookeder than JFK’s vertabrae, and it certainly went a long way in sealing the deal. -MB) They wanted a full-scale investigation, which, of course, Robert Kennedy did not authorize. What was Robert Kennedy going to do? Suddenly cut back his investigation of the mob? . . . the Kennedys were great existentialists. Once Giancana had delivered the election, they may have thought: To hell with him, let’s keep investigating.”
waits for next request from skeptical Dopers, i.e., quote from GOD
Because it was wrong, as both simple arithmetic and the cite from jshore indicated. Joe Kennedy may have been a crook, but I think I have ample reason to disagree that he bought the election for his son.
I could tell.
In case you forgot, you wrote that “Joe Kennedy took care of the rest,” meaning stole/bought/won the election for JFK. So it does indeed make a difference that even if the rather iffy claims about Illinois are true, Kennedy still wins. Don’t blame me!