Edwards Goes After Clinton, Obama

CONCORD, N.H. -- Voters shouldn't pick a presidential candidate on the basis of either "change rhetoric" or a yearning for the past, John Edwards says, seeking to draw clearer lines between himself and rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In a speech prepared for Thursday morning in New Hampshire, Edwards pointed out what he suggested were important differences between himself and his better-polling opponents.

Obama's campaign has portrayed his relatively new arrival in Washington and his pledge for change as an asset. Clinton spent most of the 1990s in the White House as the country's first lady and has touted that as invaluable experience to change the way President Bush has run the country.

Edwards said voters shouldn't accept any of that.

"Small thinking and outdated answers aren't the only problems with a vision for the future that is rooted in nostalgia," Edwards said in the prepared remarks. "The trouble with nostalgia is that you tend to remember what you liked and forget what you didn't. It's not just that the answers of the past aren't up to the job today, it's that the system that produced them was corrupt _ and still is."

Edwards also planned to tell voters they can't simply replace "a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats, just swapping the Washington insiders of one party for the Washington insiders of the other." He criticized "ideas and policies that are tired, shopworn and obsolete."

On the other hand, he said in an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press, "I don't think just the word 'change' means much to people. I think what they want to see is ... the substance of what you want to do.

"I mean, what is the policy of the word? In my case, it's been a very aggressive set of very substantive ideas ... because otherwise the change rhetoric all sounds the same."

In the interview, Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, said his speech was aimed at lobbyists and the establishment.

"It's more whether you want to look forward or look back, whether you want to see a president who is willing to take on the establishment or not," Edwards said. "I don't believe we can change the country without having a president who is willing to take on the establishment."

Edwards was returning to New Hampshire on Thursday with his wife, his three children and a bus for a four-day tour. He served one term in the Senate before running unsuccessfully for the 2004 presidential nomination. He was John Kerry's vice presidential running mate in the election loss to Bush and Dick Cheney.

Edwards characterized his Thursday speech as upbeat, a trait that pervaded his 2004 effort. During that campaign, he billed himself as the son of a mill worker; Edwards now uses that as a punch line, making fun of his frequent references to his pedigree.