US: The rural kid from the south can boost the Kerry presidential campaign, writes Conor O'Clery
There's no question that John Edwards can get a crowd all riled up. During the primary campaign the articulate, charming senator with a boyish face and southern drawl whipped up Democrats with his depiction of two Americas, one rich and privileged, the other poor and underpaid.
He tapped into resentment over low wages, inadequate health care and the outsourcing of American jobs to foreign countries. Whether in a gymnasium in Derry, New Hampshire or in a students' common room in Green Bay, Wisconsin, he would stride into the centre of the crowd, in suit and winter hiking boots, asking voters passionately to "help me change the system".
He came across at times as an Elmer Gantry who would restore jobs for workers, or as a lawyer-hero from a John Grisham novel, who took on corporate lawyers and "beat 'em, then beat 'em again". His message is relentlessly protectionist, in contrast to that of Mr Kerry. If he became president, he said back then, there would not be "free trade", but "fair trade".
In almost every respect he is the non-Kerry, a populist counter-point to a privileged presidential candidate. He is a one-term senator where Kerry has been a public figure for more than three decades.
He is a rural kid from the south where Kerry is a Yale-educated northerner. He is a Methodist where Kerry is a Roman Catholic. He has a Clinton-like empathy with blacks, where Kerry has difficulty reaching out to African Americans.
His voting record in the Senate is moderate, whereas Kerry's is liberal. He relates easily to voters whereas Kerry can often seem somewhat aloof.
Perhaps because of their different backgrounds the two Senators have not enjoyed a warm relationship, though they have become closer since the primaries ended with a Kerry victory.
The Massachusetts senator criticised Edwards for his inexperience when they were going head to head in the primaries.
He had only four years in the senate and that "is the full extent of (his) public life - no international experience, no military experience," Mr. Kerry said of his opponent at a rally in Iowa.
"When I came back from Vietnam in 1969, I don't know if John Edwards was out of diapers then."
Actually, Edwards was then a 16-year-old student, preparing to enter North Carolina State University where he obtained his first law degree in 1974.
As he says in every stump speech he was the first person in his family to attend college. He was raised in Robbins, North Carolina, where his father was textile mill worker and his mother worked as a furniture upholsterer.
After qualifying as a lawyer, Edwards got his first brief defending clients accused of making pirated Elvis Presley records, but he soon began specialising in personal injury cases.
Over 20 years he dominated the courtrooms of Nashville and Raleigh, amassing winning verdicts of $152 million, of which his take was more than $25 million.
In January 1007 he secured damages of $25 million, the highest ever such verdict in North Carolina, for a nine-year-old girl severely injured in a swimming pool accident.
His experiences he said drove him towards public service. His decision to turn his life in a new direction was also influenced by a personal tragedy he and his wife Elizabeth suffered in 1996.
His 16-year-old son Wade was killed when high winds blew his jeep off the road. They have three other children, Jack, Cate and Emma Claire.
Edwards sold his law practice for $5 million and ran for the US Senate in 1998, spending over $8 million of his own money.
In the Senate, he created an immediate favourable impression. His years in court made him a formidable debater. He helped Democratic senators navigate the Clinton impeachment proceedings and his grilling of President Bush's appeals court nominee Judge Charles Pickering about his role in a cross-burning case helped sink the nomination.
He was Al Gore's number two choice for the 2000 presidential ticket but was passed over in favour of Joe Lieberman.
Edwards got compensation of a sort when he was named the sexiest politician in People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" issue of November 2000. Edwards had by then set his eyes on the White House. He spent the next four years preparing for a run at the presidency. Like all presidential hopefuls in Congress he voted for the Iraq war in October 2002, though he now accuses Bush of "gratuitous unilateralism". During the primaries he perfected a talent for clever one-liners, such as: "George Bush has a health care plan - pray you don't get sick." He courted the media, with considerable success.
Vanity Fair wondered if he was the "perfect politician", and the New York Times gave him its blessing as "the next Bill Clinton". Now his role is destined to be the next Al Gore, that is if the Kerry-Edwards ticket is successful in November.
But Edwards undoubtedly still has his eyes set on the presidency and even if he has to endure eight years as vice-president, he will still be only 59, and undoubtedly still boyish-looking, when his chance comes again. And if the Kerry-Edwards ticket fails, and George Bush gets a second term, then Edward will be well positioned for 2008, come what may.