Edwards Questions If Obama Is Qualified to Be President

John Edwards, who is probably the least qualified candidate from either party to have a shot at a presidential nomination in recent history, has questioned whether the far more experienced Barack Obama is qualified to be president. New York 1 reports:

Edwards admitted he’s unsure if his other Democratic rival Senator Barack Obama is qualified for the job, but called him talented, young and charismatic.

Hat tip to Think On These Things who had an excellent reply to this:

Wow. I can’t believe JOHN “All rhetoric, no record, least number of years in political office than any other Democratic nominee, co-wrote the Patriot Act and the bill that sent our troops into Iraq, did less work in his full single term in the U.S. Senate than Obama has done in his half term” EDWARDS, said that.

There are several additional items to add to this. Obama spent years working as a Constitutional law professor, community organizer, and member of the state legislature before entering the Senate. Edwards sought a single term in the Senate which he primarily used to run for the 2004 nomination. When he had to settle for the vice presidential spot, he placed his own plans for a 2008 run ahead of the interests of the 2004 campaign.

Bob Shrum may have summed up Edwards best when he called him “a Clinton who hadn’t read the books.” When the National Journal took a survey of the most overrated candidates, Edwards led the Democratic field.

Edwards’ term in the Senate is hardly anything to call one qualified to run for president. The blog I quoted above already noted Edwards’ blunders on the war and the Patriot Act. George Stephanopoulos also noted many additional areas where Edwards has changed his views from when he was in the Senate.

While Edwards made healthcare a cornerstone of his campaign we found that Edwards doesn’t even know that Cuba has a government run health care system, and he even asked this just a few days after recommending that people watch Sicko which looked at the Cuban system. His ideas on health care looked even more absurd when he started talking about making preventative care mandatory.

Obama sure showed he knows more about separation of church and state, with his comments sounding much more like those of someone qualified to be president than Edwards’ statements on religion and gay marriage. Obama’s experience in Constitutional law is also more pertinent to becoming president than Edwards’ experience in using junk science to convince juries that problems caused by fetal brain injury long before the onset of labor were due to alleged malpractice at time of delivery.

Obama also shows a better understanding of dealing with poverty than Edwards, as I’ve discussed here and here. Edwards’ use of the poverty issue appears much less sincere after the exposures of how he used his Poverty Center as a means to keep supporters on the payroll after 2005 and to avoid FEC regulations. His claim that he had no idea that the mortgage company he worked for was foreclosing on Katrina victims does not say much about his intelligence after he claimed he worked for the company to learn the business.

I’ve previously quoted Brad Warthen, editorial page editor of The State as showing examples of what a phony Edwards is. Edwards supporters replied here and elsewhere that he was just a right winger who would attack any Democrat. However this defense didn’t hold up when I checked for his writings on Obama:

The 23-year-old who still gasps somewhere within me is convinced that Barack Obama is completely for real when he channels JFK via Jimmy Carter…
I first spoke to Barack Obama — very briefly, because of cell phone problems while I was traveling through mountains — a month ago. He only wanted to talk about one thing: Clean. He was unveiling his plan for “the most sweeping ethics reform in history,” — “Closing the Revolving Door,” “Increasing Public Access to Information,” and other Clean Government 101 stuff.

But with that overflow crowd of college kids providing better reception than my Treo, I realized that for this candidate, such yadda-yadda basics were more than just the talking points of that one day.

Warthen’s writings about Edwards being a phony appear much less partisan after seeing his comments on Obama and reading of his past support for Jimmy Carter.

There’s no doubt that Obama has less experience than many others who have run for president, but he has far more experience than John Edwards. Obama has also shown that he is far more knowledgeable than Edwards. Edwards has no business questioning whether anyone else is qualified to be president.

Related Post: Edwards Evades Question, Then Attacks Clinton for Triangulation. Not only is Edwards the least qualified candidate, he’s also the most hypocritical.

3 Comments

  1. 1
    Liberal Journal says:

    I completely agree.

    I think you made an error however when you wrote, “Bob Shrum may have summed up Obama best when he called him “a Clinton who hadn’t read the books.” I think you meant to say Edwards.

  2. 2
    Ron Chusid says:

    Yes, I’ll have to correct that line.

  3. 3
    rs1139 says:

    have you seen edwards’ interview with josh marshall? it’s up on veracifier dot com. it’s pretty interesting.

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