Running on The Story Of His Life

This form of populism leaves a lot to be defined in the policies and programs a President Edwards would pursue. His close friendships in the Senate reach from Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.) of liberal renown to Zell Miller (Ga.), perhaps Bush's most reliable Democratic supporter. Centrist Democrat John Breaux (La.) says that when they were working on the patients' rights legislation, "I found he was hard-charging, but practical enough to know when he had to make a deal. He's not one to charge into a brick wall."

Though his parents revered Franklin D. Roosevelt, the New Deal is too far in the past to guide his steps as it did LBJ's. At the same time, the Democratic Leadership Council, which attracted Clinton, Gore and many other southern Democrats, has never provided a home for Edwards. The DLC makes liberal trade policy a litmus test, and Edwards, like most North Carolina politicians, is sensitive to the job losses his state has suffered to imports.

In many respects, his approach to government is much like Carter's, resting on a belief in the goodness of average Americans, but not firmly anchored to any set of ideas or any party faction. Edwards shares with Carter a certain impatience with the routines and protocol of politics, but he is less aloof and intellectually disdainful of other politicians.

He has never held executive office, and the biggest organization he has run is his Senate staff. A larger gap may be in the national security area. Edwards missed the Vietnam War, registering for the draft at almost the same moment the Nixon administration suspended draft calls. But he has served on the intelligence committee and, like most of his major rivals, endorsed Bush's decision to go to war with Iraq.

Gary Pearce, a Raleigh political consultant who worked on Edwards's Senate campaign, said, "The great challenge John has -- people could see his background and experience relating to the Senate, but he's going to have a tougher time saying that's preparation for being president. The world has changed, and you've got to be a credible commander in chief. And that's a great challenge for John. It's a challenge for any Democrat. It's not our strength."

His wife, Elizabeth, said her future husband told her when they were classmates in the second year of law school at the University of North Carolina in 1975 that "at some point he was going to want to do something in the political realm." The daughter and granddaughter of Navy pilots, Elizabeth Edwards had her own successful legal career for years and is considered by those who know them as by far the most influential force in her husband's political life.

Out of Court, Onto the Floor

The time for politics came in 1997, when the Edwardses were still recovering from the death of their teenage son, Wade, killed when a gust of wind blew his car off the highway. Edwards declines to link the two events, but Hunt, one of those Edwards sounded out, says, "He was very successful in his legal practice; he'd helped a lot of people. He'd made a lot of money, but his son's death made him look anew at his life and what he was doing, and he decided to do something of greater use."

In 1997, Edwards approached Pearce, Hunt's longtime consultant, and Wade Smith, the head of his first Raleigh law firm and a former Democratic state chairman. Edwards had been a Democratic contributor but never an activist. Smith said, "I remember thinking, 'Gosh, John, why don't you run for the state legislature and serve a session or two. You're very young.' "

But Edwards had his eye on the Senate seat of Republican Lauch Faircloth. Elizabeth Edwards said, "Our friends who were [state] representatives or senators never had a whole lot great to say about what it was like to be part of that body. Besides, there was somebody pretty powerful we thought we needed to take out of office -- Lauch Faircloth."

In aiming for the top, Edwards was following the pattern of his life. The oldest of three children of Wallace Edwards, a textile worker, and his wife, Bobbie, who worked at a variety of jobs, Edwards showed a drive to succeed that even his parents find hard to fathom. "It's pleasantly surprising to us what he's accomplished," his father said in an interview. "He's always had this determination to do whatever he set his mind to," Bobbie Edwards added. "I mean, we can't take credit for it."

Edwards earned his undergraduate degree at North Carolina State University in three years, while working summers cleaning air ducts and doing other grubby jobs in the textile mills to pay for his tuition. At the law firm, he was notable for his work habits and his way with a jury. Smith said, "John is a great communicator . . . and a detail person. He leaves almost nothing to chance. By the time he would get to court, he would really know his case very, very well."

In trying to save Faircloth, the Republicans sought to tap into public distrust of trial lawyers for personally profiting from costly court settlements. And they linked Edwards to President Clinton, then facing impeachment. But Edwards countered with ads showing him as the defender of children and families who had suffered terrible injuries. He won with 51 percent of the vote.

Arriving as a novice in Washington in January 1999, Edwards found the timing fortuitous. The Senate was about to conduct a trial of the president, and no Democrat had more recent or successful courtroom experience than Edwards. He was chosen to depose key witnesses and to deliver one of the closing defense arguments. "It was kind of a baptism by fire," Daschle recalls, "and I think he impressed everyone by the way he handled it."

He has repeated the role of skilled interrogator in helping Judiciary Committee Democrats build their case for opposition to several of Bush's judicial appointments, and he tells receptive Democratic audiences that one major motivation for his running is to safeguard civil rights and other values he cherishes against the "right wing" judges Bush is picking. That segues into the biggest applause line in his speech, a vow that he will do all in his power to assure that "we do not in the name of the war on terrorism and the need for homeland security let people like [Attorney General] John Ashcroft take away our lives, our liberties, our freedom." (Edwards opposed Ashcroft's confirmation but voted for the USA Patriot Act, expanding the surveillance powers of the Justice Department.)