Blatant Reality

By Jonathan Williams

Yesterday, I went to see John Edwards speak at a Townhall style Q&A session in the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center. Don’t think that just because it was at the convention center that the room we met in was big because it wasn’t. It was a fairly small room that was filled to capacity by 12:30, the time the event was supposed to start. The one thing that you immediately noticed was the GIGANTIC American flag located on the wall conveniently behind where Edwards would be standing. Most politicians have a lot of flags behind them when they speak but I guess Edwards motto is “bigger is always better.” Which, coincidentally, is the same motto he uses when referring to the government.

 

 

The event was sponsored by SAVE (Student Association for Voter Empowerment) a nonprofit that works to create events, such as this, that make presidential candidates accessible to the public. Their main goal was to show young adults that presidential candidates are accessible and show presidential candidates that students do care. I don’t know if the number of students present was satisfactory to them because there were roughly 30 students out of the hundred or so people there. If they wanted more students attend, my suggestions to them would be to 1) hold it on the University of South Carolina campus and 2) not have the meeting right in the middle of the school day. I myself chose to skip class to go there and I’m sure that most students wouldn’t have made the same sacrifice.

 

 

Edwards started off the event by having a roughly ten minute long speech before the Q&A began. In his speech, he first attacked the “New York and Chicago style of politics of personal attacks” by saying that South Carolina deserves better than that. He then went on to attack Hillary for not staying in South Carolina longer to campaign and meet the people. Later on he stated in his speech that he is the only democratic candidate that is against building more nuclear power plants plus placing a moratorium on building any more coal power plants. Towards the end of this introductory speech, he reminded everyone that he has never “taken a dime” from lobbyist or special interest groups. He concluded this speech by saying that everyone there needs to get out and vote for him come tomorrow. If you want to watch the entire thing, I have it split up here into two separate sections:

 

John Edwards Introductory Speech (Part 1)

 

John Edwards Introductory Speech (Part 2)

 

After this introduction speech, the questions started. First off, the two sponsors asked him four quick questions. The first question had to do with how people should find accurate information about the candidates in a 30-second sound bite world. His answer to that was basically the internet, which I’m sure is an answer all of you who are reading this can agree with. Heh. Bet you never thought you would agreed with Edwards on anything. Don’t feel too bad, I never thought I would either. The next question was what will Edwards do to help our economy. You know what the first item on his list of things he would do is? Invest in building green infrastructure. Yeah, I was also confused on why that was number one item on his list.

 

The next question asked was about what he will do to ensure that the Roe v. Wade ruling stays the way it is. He stated the same mantra liberals have been spouting for the past 25 years about it being a woman’s right and such. He then states that “nobody made me God” and he doesn’t feel that it is the government’s role to to tell woman what they have to do. However, as one would expect, he doesn’t seem so hesitant to allow the government to intervene in other areas of our lives.

 

 

There is one last topic in his Q&A that I feel needs to be addressed. At one point midway through the second to last question (Part 4 of Q&A), Edwards brought up George Bush and how Bush keeps saying the war is going well when, in fact, it is going poorly. Well, I hate to be the one to break it to Edwards, but the war in Iraq does seem to be taking a turn for the better. I know, I really am sorry Edwards, but you won’t be able to use the war for your advantage. Here are two previous articles about how there is real success in Iraq and that the surge is working.

 

Edwards also tried to point out that the support for the Iraq War has been continually dropping when, in the past six months, support has actually risen. For example, when a CNN poll asked the public how they thought the war was going in Iraq, 38% said moderately well. That is a 12 percent increase from June! Better yet, those who thought the war was going very badly dropped from 44% in June to 23% this January. Another thing to keep in mind is that these percentages are respectively the highest and lowest percentages since June of 2006. So I am terribly sorry Mr. Edwards, you are wrong. America has not rejected the idea that we are doing well in Iraq and public opinion is definitely moving towards more support of the war than against it.

 

To view all the questions and answers, you can see the links below:

 

John Edwards Q&A (Part 1)

 

John Edwards Q&A (Part 2)

 

John Edwards Q&A (Part 3)

 

John Edwards Q&A (Part 4)

 

After his Q&A session was finally over, several reporters present seemed to be in a mad dash to find students to interview. My friends and I were stopped by a couple and summarily interviewed. I, for one, learned a valuable lesson today: always find out who the reporter is working for before agreeing to give an interview, especially a video one. For example, I wouldn’t be surprised to find a quote from me ending up on the Huffington Post because I was interviewed by a lady freelancing for HuffPo. This fact wasn’t revealed to me until after I had given her my interview, name, and party affiliation.

 

 

Also, a reporter from The Palestra did a video interview with me which can be viewed here. Now, in my three minute interview, my main focus was informing her on why I support Mike Huckabee over John Edwards, but of course this isn’t the section they use in the clip. Nope, they decide to use the part where I am saying that John Edwards’ speech today was “on message” which, in fact, is true. This sound bite taken by itself may seem like I was a supporter of Edwards when, in fact, nothing could be farther than the truth. When I say he was “on message,” I mean he was on the same crazy message he has been preaching for a while. This craziness in turn made the speech pretty entertaining which is why I enjoyed watching it.

 

So if you take anything from this blog entry, let it be this: never give an interview if you don’t know who you are interviewing for and be ready to be misinterpreted. If you can handle these two things than feel free to tell the reporters whatever they want. I, for one, will stick to my blogs. At least when I quote someone, I try to include the whole speech.