Poster Boy
by Robert Yoho, Associate Editor
"Eye on Conservatism"
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Nothing
confirms the double standard that exists in Hollywood and the media any more
than the rapid ascension of Sen. John Edwards (D-NC, right). For over a year
on the cable and network political news shows, the man who made his fortune
bringing suit against businesses and health care professionals has increasingly
become the "new" face of the Democratic Party.
During the 2000 presidential race, Albert Gore Jr. even put Sen. Edwards through the vetting process as a potential vice presidential running mate. The fact that the young North Carolina senator was ever seriously considered as a VP candidate in 2000 or is now being mentioned as possible presidential timber in 2004 should forever lay to rest any question of inherent media bias.
Despite the fact that he has never completed a whole term in elective office, Edwards is widely regarded as a credible party spokesman. Successfully escaping the petulant scrutiny of pompous network anchors, he still has yet to find himself the target of skits on Saturday Night Live and caustic barbs from Jay Leno and David Letterman.
In
1988, an incumbent Vice President chose a young United States senator to be
his vice presidential candidate. No doubt you all remember the liberals’ mocking
of the selection of Dan Quayle (left) to be the running mate for George H. W.
Bush. The media excoriated the young senator. They said he was unqualified.
They ridiculed him as an intellectual lightweight. The press said the young
senator was little more than a pampered rich kid, who used his family’s political
influence to get out of the Vietnam War and into the National Guard.
If any of this sounds vaguely familiar, it is because Hollywood and the media employed these same sleazy tactics against George W. Bush in 2000. Until that time, they saw no reason to deviate from their previously successful game plan.
After George H. W. Bush was elected, someone even joked that if anything were to happen to him, then the Secret Service had orders to immediately shoot the vice president. Undeservedly so, Dan Quayle was—and still is—little more than public laughing stock.
However, Sen. Quayle was eminently more qualified to assume our highest elective office than was Sen. Edwards, the North Carolina soccer mom’s favorite ambulance chaser. Quayle served two terms in the United States House of Representatives from the state of Indiana. Then, in his first race for the United States Senate, he unseated incumbent Birch Bayh, a liberal legend. Quayle was easily re-elected to the Senate in 1986.
As a member of the Senate, he served on the Armed Services Committee and was chosen chairman of the Labor Committee’s employment subcommittee. Then the media went into hysterics when the young conservative was tapped as Bush’s running mate in 1988. A rising political star quickly became a falling star in little more than 24 hours of reporting.
Before his 1998 victory over Sen. Lauch Faircloth, Edwards had never held any elective office. Now while I do not think a lack of political experience disqualifies a person from high public office, the media elites stubbornly cling to that notion like the Holy Grail. It is they who would tell us that a GOP candidate like Sen. Edwards would no have the "gravitas" to be president. It would be the Hollywood liberals who would condemn his inexperience and lack of substance.
So someone please explain to me how this North Carolina, liberal, political neophyte is supremely qualified to become the Commander-in-Chief. In a perfect world, there should be the same amount of abuse heaped upon Edwards as there was upon Dan Quayle!
If John Edwards were a Republican, then it is certain that the media would have made him the poster boy for incompetence…
And incontinence. ***
COPYRIGHT © 2002 BY THE AMERICAN PARTISAN. All writers retain rights to their work.
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