Presidential hubris knows no bounds

I don't post much political thought here, because there are a million and one blogs out there that do so more passionately and eloquently than I could. But when George W. Bush questions John Edwards' experience... I'm just glad I wasn't drinking anything, otherwise I'd have one messy computer monitor:

President Bush criticized Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards in his own home state on Wednesday by questioning whether Edwards has sufficient experience to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Edwards is a freshman senator from North Carolina, who broke the Jesse Helms machine's stranglehold on that state. Edwards has been in office a little more than five years, co-authored the Patients' Bill of Rights with John McCain and fought against weakening the Clean Air Act. Edwards serves on four high-profile Senate committees: Judiciary; Small Business; Select Committee on Intelligence; Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. The Select Committee on Intelligence is particularly noteworthy, because it deals in large part with foreign affairs and national security, two areas where Edwards' inexperience is most often cited. Bush, in comparison, had been governor of Texas for little over five years when he ran for president. Bush's foreign policy experience amounted to trying to negotiate a settlement of Mexico's water debt in accordance with various Rio Grande watershed treaties--an issue that remains unresolved today. His big claim to fame was pushing through a $10,000 property tax exemption--which was promptly negated by taxing districts raising tax rates statewide to compensate. Aside from that, it helps to understand that the Texas governor is one of the weakest--if not the weakest--executive offices in any of the 50 states. He, and Anne Richards before him, and Bill Clements, Mark White... all of them only rank slightly higher than figureheads in terms of actual power weilded. That's because of Texas' spectacularly bad constitution which succeeds in only one area--limiting the power of elected officials. If you want to get down to bare-knuckled politics, Edwards is far and away more qualified for vice president at this point than Bush was at the same point in his campaign for president. Heck, Edwards today is more qualified for president than Bush was four years ago. For Bush to suggest otherwise leads me to think this administration will be promoting ketchup as a vegetable any day now.

Edwards isn't the perfect candidate. I'd rather his voting trends be more centrist. He is greener than I'd like, and Howard Fineman does a good job of outlining this along with Edwards' meteoric rise in politics. But when push comes to shove, I'd take the green Edwards over Bush/Cheney any day of the week.

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