Edwards Roundup

Andrew Sullivan delivers a brutal fisking to John Kerry's speech announcing his VP choice.

It's perhaps the first national stump speech given by Kerry now that the primaries are long over and the national campaign is beginning. And it was dreadful. It failed on almost every count. It was tedious; it was vacuous; and it was hyper-liberal.
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You can hack away at this kind of verbiage for a very long time and the weeds of blather just keep growing back.
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And it's about the future, and children, and the future of children and ... who writes this crap?

I disagree with Sullivan that Edwards was a good choice; he brings no experience, no extra electoral votes, and a slew of soundbites that the Republicans will be thrilled to use.

William Safire writes today (along with others) that Edwards was the choice of a candidate who is not confident in his election prospects - Kerry chose someone who would help him in the campaign, but would not help him governing.

In my view, he failed that test. In the choice between the Democrat most ready to be president and the Democrat who would enliven a stalled campaign, Kerry played it safe and chose the political hottie, Edwards.

Not, as South Carolina's Graham says, "the confident pick."

Meanwhile, Tony Blankley thinks that the choice of Edwards makes absolutely no difference. Between the conventions, the Olympics, and The World Series, people won't start to really pay attention to the race until a month before the elections, and that only one thing will matter then.

Finally, the public will pay attention to the campaign. With a short month left, the undecided likely voters, 5 percent to 10 percent of the electorate, will look up and see who they want to vote for. If Iraq looks to be going to hell in a hand basket, they will vote for the other guy. If things seem OK in Iraq, they'll vote for the guy currently in the White House. Thus is history made. And nobody has come up with a better way yet