Little Johnny Edwards, 8 Years Old

Presidential candidate John Edwards' statement on the departure of Alberto Gonzales:

Better late than never.

His statement on the resignation of Karl Rove:

Goodbye, good riddance.

Coming soon, John Edwards' statement on the tarring and feathering of Michael Chertoff:

Smell ya later!

The e-mail version of the press release will come with a .wav file of an armpit farting noise.

Part of me wants to give Edwards some credit for not following the normal rules of this stuff—raise your nose 90 degrees, act high-and-mighty, slip in some campaign slogans. (Here's Obama on Gonzo for comparison.) But boy, does Edwards ever sound phony.

The great Shawn Macomber has taken Edwards to the woodshed for previous outbursts of down-to-earthness.

Comments

[Christopher Monnier]

From Obama's website:

The President needs to nominate an Attorney General who will be the people's lawyer, not the President's lawyer, and in an Obama Administration that person will first and foremost defend and promote the rights and liberties enshrined in our Constitution," said Obama.

Ahh, campaign promises...

[Iron Lungfish]

Yes, because we all know the staff of Reason are all very much above terse, snarky put-downs, right? Edwards put out a longer statement later on after the Rove resignation, and I imagine he'll send out another one to his supporters after this one. These sorts of instant-reaction sound bites aren't that unusual, and I don't see how they make Edwards "phony" - in fact, the reference to Edwards's supposed phoniness is clearly an attempt to shoehorn in a separate media narrative about his campaign ("he SAYS he cares about poor people, but on the other hand, he's got an EXPENSIVE HOUSE! PHONY!!!!").

It's clear that libertarians have many substantive reasons to dislike Edwards - he's an unabashed labor-liberal populist, and that's going to grate against anyone with a right-libertarian ideology. So why not stick to your actual objections to Edwards's actual policies, instead of harping on stupid superficial stuff? It makes you people look like the phonies here.

[Ironchef]

John Edwards gets hammered here as well. It's too easy.

[J sub D]

I concur. Edwards is Chavez lite, but his comments about Gonzales and Rove track my views fairly well.

[Jim Bob]

I get the sense that Davic Weigel just doesn't like Edwards very much at all, perhaps like how I feel about ticks and leeches.

[Jim Bob]

*David Weigel...Davic Weigel is his Slavic cousin.

[Dave Weigel]

Davic Weigel is just a shill for the Demokratska stranka.

[Timothy]

Wait, John Edwards sounding phony? I am shocked, shocked and appalled.

[Dan T.]

So Edwards says that the resignation of Gonzales was "better late than never" and Mr. Weigel accuses him of phoniness.

So this means that Weigel believes that Edwards does not really approve of the resignation? Does he really think that it was "better never than late"?

[jkp]

This administration is dragging on as badly as the last season of NBC's "The West Wing".

[jkp]

Dan,

Thank god you're here to analyze the nuances of the stuff Weigel writes on a Monday morning when he was probably hungover anyway. Too bad the USSR went under -- you would've had a secure job at CIA trying to figure out the rise and fall of CPSU personages based on who was standing next to whom at May Day parades.

[Randolph Carter]

Dan T.,
The point is that Edwards said something laughably stupid and trite.

Like if a candidate saw him leaving and got up in his face and yelled "PEACE!" and laughed. I still hope that'll happen.

[Bergamot]

Up your nose with a rubber hose.

[thoreau]

Davic Weigel is just a shill for the Demokratska stranka.

David Weigel wins the thread.

And Davic Weigel will be allowed to vote in a referendum on whether his border town will secede from Kosovo. So everybody wins.

[joe]

I thought the last season of The West Wing was noticeably better than the two that preceded it.

[Dan T.]

Dan T.,
The point is that Edwards said something laughably stupid and trite.

"Better late than never" probably counts as trite but I'm not sure about laughably stupid.

In fact, it sounds like the appropriate thing to say, given that we're talking about Gonzales.

[Dan T.]

Dan,

Thank god you're here to analyze the nuances of the stuff Weigel writes on a Monday morning when he was probably hungover anyway. Too bad the USSR went under -- you would've had a secure job at CIA trying to figure out the rise and fall of CPSU personages based on who was standing next to whom at May Day parades.

I'm sort of David Weigel's own personal David Weigel.

[Dave Weigel]

I'm sort of David Weigel's own personal David Weigel.

Reach out and touch faith spelling errors.

[joe]

Your own.
Personal.
Weigel.
Someone to post on a lark.
Someone who snarks.

Reach out and touch spelling errors.

[paul]

I agree with basically everyone. as Weigel said a while back, Edwards is, indeed, a "human landfill," but not because of this. and as far as cheap political opportunism goes, Obama's press release is pretty tame; I like what he said.

[Rich Ard]

[sung in Johnny Cash's voice]

[Will]

Sounds about right to me. And even after thinking about it for a good, oh, thirty seconds or so, I don't see how Edwards' short statement is evidence of "phoniness." Does Wiegel think he's secretly verbose or something? Gimme a break. If anything, the short statement is a great way to get press - like Wiegel notes, it stands out from all the puffery, a la Obama's rambling.

[Will]

*Weigel. My apologoes.

[tk]

Joe,

Nice. Now I have that music AND video stuck in my head (the Depeche Mode one, not Johnny Cash)

[Curt M]

Sounds phony?

Are you twelve?

You want to elect another President on who can fake their down-to-earthness the best?

If you insist on electing politicians on who is the best actor guess what you are going to get. Good actors. Great strategy you foolish twit.

Did that sound earthy enough for you? Cause that was definitely the real me.

[s.m. koppelman]

Let me get this straight: it sounds trite and phony because the guy saying it looks like the Southern lawyer that he is, but if he affected a Northern accent, got a $12 haircut and dressed like Lou Reed circa 1983 like some magazine publishers with Ph.D.s in literature, it would sound refreshingly direct and "edgy".

[Morat20]

It's a pair of succinct responses that accurately capture Edwards' views on the matter.

And that's bad?

Admittedly, it'd put the "Shorter Person X" folks out of business....

[Frank]

I actually appreciate these official responses from the Edwards' camp. They're the least phony sounding statements I've heard, as a matter of fact. What else is there to be said about either Rove or Gonzales that hasn't been said 100 times, already?

[Adam]

Yeah, count me among those who finds Edwards' statements on these resignations to be far preferable to the usual bloviating. Yes, this sort of thing could eventually get too cute, but what else really needs to be said about Gonzalez's departure?

I'm also not sure exactly what's phony about the line "Better late than never." Did he deliver it while riding around in a red pickup truck?

[Dan T.]

Let me get this straight: it sounds trite and phony because the guy saying it looks like the Southern lawyer that he is, but if he affected a Northern accent, got a $12 haircut and dressed like Lou Reed circa 1983 like some magazine publishers with Ph.D.s in literature, it would sound refreshingly direct and "edgy".

To be fair, Nick would never be seen in a pair of those aviator-style shades that Reed liked to sport.

[s.m. koppelman]

(Incidentally, I don't mean to imply that the rugged, individualistic Mr. Gillespie affects his accent. It was his own good fortune that he developed it naturally growing up in parts of the country where snark is "authentic".)

[s.m. koppelman]

(my point being that the fellows at Reason who do engage in succinct bits of snark must feel lucky they don't have accents and rates of facial hair growth that disqualify them from expressing snark)

[Kevin]

The headline made me think of a story I read in the Sunday paper about Edwards on the campaign trail with his kids. I have no particular animus for Edwards and realize that he's not the only candidate with young ones in tow, but crap, you should have seen the looks on their faces. Think of the most boring trip your parents ever took you on and multiply it by every day. Hope it was worth it.

And joe, you're right. The West Wing picked up nicely once the Vinick/Santos campaign started. The previous season was as tedious as being one of John Edwards' kids on a bus in Iowa.

[Gahan]

At least Edwards seemed to know who Alberto Gonzales is, which is a marked improvement over his Cuba comment.

[prolefeed]

Don't much care for Edwards, but beating him up over this seems like a reach -- kinda like picking on Mitt Romney for wearing funny-looking underwear, or Hillary for her cleavage. Lots of reasons to snark on all these folks without going after such innocuous stuff.

Wouldn't it have been more honest to post: "Does John Edwards suck, or what? Comment."

[S.A. Miller]

But boy, does Edwards ever sound phony.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I would call it a duck.

[Jim Bob]

Davic Weigel is just a shill for the Demokratska stranka.

Okay, that was funny. 😀

Fake edit: Hours behind.

[Tommy_Grand]

I like Edwards comments. I would have said the same thing(s).

[Bopo]

"But boy, does Edwards ever sound phony"

This is roughly akin to saying: "But boy does Jupiter look big." He doesn't just sound phony, he is phony.

[fishbane]

Damn, this is annoying. I like Dave's snark most of the time, and I don't like Edwards at all. But this is about the dumbest attack on him I've seen. If Edwards is being phony with these comments, then I must be phony as well, because I said nearly the exact same things when learning the news.

[joshua corning]

WTF?!?!

Did Weigel just kick a democrat's nuts in for a story shadowed by the resignation of a republican nominated crony?!?!

The math on this is mind staggering.

To be honest I am a little bit scared.

[Goldthwait]

This story is indeed surprising for several reasons. The most surprising aspect of all is the fact a Democrat was attacked at all on this site. In the time I have been posting on this site, I have seen maybe 5 attacks on Democrats either serving in Congress or running for president. Compare this with the number on Republicans. Hell, I lost track about 200 attacks ago. There are more attacks on Giuliani in a given day than on the entirety of the Democratic Party in a month.
I am not saying the attacks on the Republicans are not warranted, but for a libertarian site, it is unusual that the most statist party in the country does not come in for more criticism.

[Jake Boone]

Goldthwait -

Just wait until after the 2008 elections. Reason goes after the Repubs for doing stupid shit because they're currently the ones with the power to do stupid shit. Once the Dems hold the reins, you'll see Reason slamming on them a lot more (and you'll see posts from people complaining how Reason is clearly pro-Democrat and anti-Republican).

[joshua corning]

Just wait until after the 2008 elections.

So a lame duck republican president a dem controlled house and senate and somehow the republicans are in power.

Jake, WAKE UP!