In today's National Review Online, Rich Lowry attacks John Edwards:
This is a populism with a distinct trial-lawyer cast. Anything that companies do to make a profit is basically a crime, and Edwards is going to go after them, just as he did as a trial lawyer in the medical-malpractice cases that made his $12 million to $60 million fortune. Edwards makes no notable call for self-reliance or individual responsibility, since in his worldview people basically aren't up to it.This attack, and singling out of Edwards, is unfair. Doesn't this describe the Democrat Party as a whole? How is John Kerry or Howard Dean any different in their approach? Isn't it the Democratic Party who insists in election after election that people need government to take care of them, to protect them from the evil, inhuman corporations to buying their meds?
Edwards calls his rap "optimism," but it is deeply pessimistic in what it says about our individual capacities to fend for ourselves. It is dishonest besides. His tale of how corporate special interests dominate Washington is infantile. Corporate interests work partly to protect themselves from other interests, including trial lawyers.
