A DEMOCRAT PRESIDENT
Every election season, I go through the same exercise. I look at the Democratic candidates and try to imagine them as the big cheese, leader of the free world and the embodiment of my nation's strengths, hopes and dreams. I look for the positive and try to discover how I will be proud of this man as my president. In other words, I take a break from nitpicking and poopooing every proposal as either lame-brained or bullshit.

I haven't gotten far with the current Democratic crowd. Gut reaction is that Kucinich, Sharpton and Clark scare me, but I still believe that I can find something about each of the rest to be proud of. Maybe my gut can change on Clark, but I'm sure that my gut is right on Kucinich and Sharpton. Maybe a President Gephardt would find that economic conservative from his old days. Maybe President Dean would govern as a moderate and not as a left-wing demagogue. Maybe President Lieberman would -- well, that's not hard., I'm sure I could be proud of a President Lieberman.

I'm from North Carolina, so I've been thinking a lot about John Edwards. Is he a liberal? I don't know. Yes, we can point to his voting record, but as a freshman Senator, there's a certain amount of toeing the party line that he's had to do. And since Tom Daschle is drawing that line, of course anybody voting with his party most of the time will have a liberal voting record. Otherwise, the leadership would have marginalized him because loyalty to the leadership seems to be one of the prime values in Washington.

But Edwards is mostly portrayed in the press as a moderate, and I think that is how he wants to be protrayed. Now drop your cynicism and consider that maybe he wants to be a moderate because he believes he is a moderate -- which must mean that he sees others in his party that he knows are to his left. Is it possible that Edwards really is a moderate, mouthing certain leftist buzzwords to appeal to Democratic voters?

His campaign staff does not read like a who's who of national Democratic politics. Most have experience on the national level, but no one was the top dog on any previous campaign, so it is impossible to tell if they are typical DNC Democrats, if they are DLC Dems, or if they are non-ideological. The General Chairman is Raleigh lawyer Ed Turlington. And while we NOrth Carolina Republicans like to tell you how liberal our North Carolina Democrats are, they aren't liberal on the whole to the extent that the national party is. A liberal serving the far left their red meat would not be competitive in North Carolina in any normal year, and Edwards ran the center in 1998 here.

So, my hope for an Edwards presidency, if it comes to that, is that his Democratic party values truly were fashioned in North Carolina, where Democratic leaders have understood the importance of business (Terry Sanford was responsible for Research Triangle Park -- which liberals today would call "corporate welfare") and a strong national defense (former Congressman Walter Jones, Sr., for example) and that have been somewhat wary of the national party's liberal extremes (Bob Etheridge doesn't seem to be a pawn of Nancy Pelosi). And yes, I know there are plenty of examples and arguments to show some real, fantasyland style liberalism on his part and members of his campaign, but like I said, I'm trying to see the possibilities here.