Within hours of Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry's announcement of North Carolina's John Edwards to the No. 2 spot on the ticket, the media began running stories about how worried Kerry's choice has made the Republicans.
Republican "nervousness" notwithstanding, the media are positively bubbling with glee at the prospect of having someone else – anyone else – to cover for a change. (It's hard enough to stay awake during a Kerry speech, let alone take notes.)
The Washington correspondent for the Australian Age, Marian Wilkinson, contrasted the vice presidential candidate with the current VP, describing Edwards as a "silver-tongued, vigorous senator," facing off against "the aloof, heart-attack-prone Washington insider" Dick Cheney.
The media gushed about Edwards' charisma and charm, with the Boston Globe going so far as to predict the ticket as "yet another step toward a Clintonian future" – except that to staff writer Peter Canellos, that would be a GOOD thing.
Matt Drudge, however, captured the real reason that the media is in such a frenzy, headlining his website with a photo of the "dream team," bearing the caption, "We've Got Better Hair."
I wish I were a Republican strategist. The Democrats hail the selection of John Edwards as bringing "balance" to the ticket. A comparison of the voting records of the two Johns with Teddy Kennedy open up all kinds of possibilities. Having a presidential ticket which is collectively to the left of Ted Kennedy is almost too good to be true.
The prospect of John Kerry, whose wife is reportedly a billionaire, and John Edwards, a millionaire trial lawyer, campaigning as champions of the underprivileged is almost cartoonish in its absurdity.
It is almost as absurd as the image of the two millionaires trying to convince the underprivileged that the only way to fix America's economic problems is to raise their taxes.
And they have to accomplish this trick while pretending that the economy is not in the midst of the strongest economic recovery since the Reagan administration (despite the numbers that say it is).
In point of fact, the GOP should be (and probably is) as delighted as the Washington press corps to welcome John Edwards to the ticket. The Republican spin doctors are already producing new political ads, but instead of going after Edwards directly, they are using their No. 1 political operative – John Kerry – to do the voiceovers.
Kerry has already produced a number of useful sound bytes for the Bush-Cheney campaign, such as his famous, "I voted for the $87 billion – before I voted against it" flip-flop over the Iraqi reconstruction funding bill.
Kerry wrote the future GOP "attack ad" himself, calling his new running mate "a man whose life has prepared him for leadership and whose character brings him to exercise it."
You can bet that quote will appear just after the quote of Kerry's dismissal of former opponent John Edwards last January: "In the Senate four years – and that is the full extent of public life – no international experience, no military experience."
But since there are now two candidates, maybe it would be more effective for the Bush campaign to let Edwards speak for himself.
Answering Kerry's January charge of inexperience last February, Edwards asked the voters: "Do you believe that change is more likely to be brought about by someone who has spent 20 years in Washington or by someone who is more of an outsider to this process?"
(It would seem, since Kerry won the nomination, that experience even counts among Democratic voters.) Despite this, the mainstream liberals are calling the Kerry-Edwards ticket a "dream team."
And this is probably true. Particularly if you happen to be a Republican campaign strategist.