Positivity propels a worthy opponent

John Edwards did not so much contemplate a run for the presidency as he have his candidacy thrust upon him.

In a Democratic Party eager for a new, charismatic leader in the wake of the presidential election debacle in 2000, the first-term senator from North Carolina looked plausibly like the new Bill Clinton: charming, quick as a whip and, significantly, a southerner.

But that was before 11 September 2001, at which point the golden boy lost much of his sheen and suddenly looked callow and inexperienced - especially in the areas of national security and foreign policy, which had shot to the top of the political agenda. Suddenly, the pundits found him too slick, too willing to bang on about his modest origins as a mill worker's son while conveniently ignoring his lucrative career as a litigation lawyer. With his shiny hair worthy of a Silvikrin advert, which made him look a decade younger than his 50 years, Mr Edwards did not seem ready for prime time.

So conventional wisdom ran, right up to the astonishing last week of the Iowa campaign. Mr Edwards remained firmly on the list of also-rans, a man not so much running for the top slot on the Democratic presidential ticket as sticking around in the hope of being picked as someone's running mate.

ButIowans warmed to Mr Edwards's youthfulness, his warmth and his buoyant optimism. While Howard Dean and Richard Gephardt, the candidates presumed as front-runners, came under vicious attack and, by the end, were giving as good as they got, Mr Edwards managed to stay above the fray and appear oddly plausible.

His breakthrough moment came with an endorsement by Iowa's main newspaper, the Des Moines Register, which noted, perhaps presciently, that Democrats liked Mr Dean's rallying cry to "take the country back" but were not necessarily comfortable with the messenger. The newspaper said: "Dean has the slogan but it is Edwards who most eloquently and believably expresses this point of view, with his trial-lawyer skill for distilling arguments into compelling language."

Mr Edwards alluded to the same thing in a recent speech, telling a crowd in San Francisco, formerly a Dean stronghold: "If all we are in 2004 is a party of anger, we can't win."