One Hug at a Time

It's friday night in iowa and an old politician is trying some new tricks. John Edwards is back--back, with the familiar deep drawl, dark tan and honeyed hair. Gone, though, are the old catchphrases--"two Americas" and "hope is on the way." In their place: a long meditation on America's moral obligation to confront the plight of its poor. "Thirty-seven million of our people, worried about feeding and clothing their children," he said to his audience. "Aren't we better than that?" It's not the stuff of great sound bites, but it's part of Edwards's new political plan: a presidential campaign with fighting poverty as a central plank. It's a risky strategy in today's Democratic Party--Edwards may be the most viable national candidate since Bobby Kennedy to tie his destiny to a fight for the destitute. "Yeah, I heard all that stuff: 'Who cares?' or 'It's a dead end'," Edwards tells NEWSWEEK. "Well, it's what I want to do."

Rebel outsider is an odd role for the Democratic Party's most recent vice presidential candidate to play. Yet Edwards's 2008 presidential campaign--still hypothetical but proceeding at high speed--is all about breaking with the established script. He's largely opted out of the buzz primary--leaving candidates like former Virginia governor Mark Warner and Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh to convince Beltway insiders and media types that they're the best alternatives to front runner Hillary Clinton. Instead, he's using the name recognition he built up in '04 and hitting the campaign trail early and often--quietly raising $6.5 million in 105 appearances for Democrats running in 2006.

His under-the-radar strategy is paying off, in Iowa at least. A June Des Moines Register poll of likely Democratic caucus-goers had Edwards leading a pack of potential presidential candidates that included other widely known names like Clinton, 2004 ticketmate John Kerry and even Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack. Edwards is certainly not the only candidate hustling in corn-country--Warner and Bayh visited within days of his most recent visit--but with 10 trips to the state since the beginning of 2005, he's logged more time there than any candidate in either party. This time, they're counting on Iowa, which brought John Kerry's candidacy back from the dead in 2004, to propel them into New Hampshire, and beyond. To win, Edwards must leverage his 2004 visibility, shake off the disappointment many Democrats felt at the campaign and emerge from Kerry's shadow as a worthy candidate in his own right.

Edwards talks about 2004 like it was a lifetime ago. His wife, Elizabeth, was diagnosed with breast cancer the day after the election. "We just threw ourselves into it," he recalls. "I went with Elizabeth to every chemo test." The twin traumas--losing a national election and watching a spouse suffer--were an enormous emotional load. But Elizabeth's illness helped Edwards keep the election loss in perspective. "The adjustment wasn't that hard," he says, "because I was so focused on getting her well."

Edwards's old running mate, John Kerry, has had a harder time moving on. Relations between the two men were always more functional than friendly, and the two Johns are now eying each other as potential opponents. There is history here: before inviting him to join his ticket, Kerry asked Edwards if he would run against him in 2008 in the event they lost the election the first time around. Edwards, according to two former campaign aides who asked not to be named describing closed-door discussions, was taken aback and ducked the question. (Edwards declined to comment on a private conversation; Kerry was unavailable for comment.)

Still, to truly cut the cord with Kerry-Edwards, the North Carolinian has to shore up the political weaknesses highlighted by the last campaign. Dismissed as a foreign-policy lightweight in '04, he's co-chaired (with former Republican veep candidate Jack Kemp) a task force on U.S.-Russia relations, and traveled to Europe, India and the Middle East. "The important thing," he says, "is making it clear you have a world view." He's signed up with the New York investment group Fortress--a move that may help combat the notion that as a longtime trial lawyer, he's anti-business. (It also helps cover a new home on 100 acres in Chapel Hill.)