A Speech as Sunny as the Day

Sen. John Edwards on Wednesday launched his first solo tour as the Democratic Party’s vice presidential candidate, delivering an upbeat message about America’s future and suggesting that President Bush did not have the courage or leadership to accept responsibility for flawed intelligence about Iraq.

In a 13-minute speech on the steps of the Iowa Capitol, Edwards praised British Prime Minister Tony Blair and, indirectly, criticized Bush for their divergent reactions in recent days to reports that intelligence agencies in both nations had overstated the evidence that Iraq held weapons of mass destruction.

Blair on Wednesday responded to a British report on the intelligence failures by saying that he accepted “full personal responsibility” for reports that overstated the threat from Iraqi chemical and biological weapons -- a prelude to the war that Britain and the U.S. took the lead in prosecuting.

Bush has called the failures unfortunate but has maintained that going to war was the right thing to do. He has not acknowledged any personal culpability for the faulty weapons reports.

“What Tony Blair did is he said, ‘I take full responsibility for the mistakes,’ because he understands what leadership is,” Edwards told a crowd of about 1,000 in Des Moines. He noted that President Kennedy took a similar course after the botched Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba.

Without mentioning Bush, Edwards added: “The truth is this: What we need in the White House is somebody who has the strength, courage and leadership to take responsibility and be accountable not only for what’s good, but for what’s bad. That’s what John Kerry will be.”

Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt called Edwards’ remarks part of a “flailing and desperate” strategy by the Democrats to “distract from their troubling record of voting for the use of force in Iraq and then voting against body armor and supplies for the troops they sent into harm’s way.”

Most of Edwards’ remarks centered on themes as broad and bright as the blue sky over the golden Capitol dome in Des Moines. During his speech, Edwards said that he and Sen. John F. Kerry, the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, had the values and optimism to assure that “tomorrow will be better than today.”

Edwards’ solo appearance in Iowa broke new ground in the campaign, as all his previous outings since being tapped by Kerry last week had been with the Massachusetts senator. Kerry cleared his schedule Wednesday, partly so his running mate would be the focus of the day’s news reports.

Democrats have said they expect Edwards, a North Carolina senator, to help them substantially in rural states such as Iowa, where his small-town roots helped power his own presidential campaign to a second-place finish in January’s Iowa caucuses. Edwards conducted several television interviews Tuesday, including four with stations in Wisconsin, where Bush was campaigning.

After a Wednesday night fundraiser in Chicago that featured Illinois’ Barack Obama, a Senate candidate and the Democratic National Convention’s keynote speaker, Edwards planned to continue his six-day trip in New Orleans, Houston, Los Angeles and Miami before going home to North Carolina.

The 51-year-old candidate emerged from the front doors of the Iowa Capitol beaming and delivering a thumbs-up to the crowd, before descending to a stage with his wife, Elizabeth; Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack and Iowa First Lady Christie Vilsack.

Aside from the reference to the Iraqi weapons discussion, he mentioned one other news event of the day -- the Senate’s defeat of a proposal for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages. Although neither he nor Kerry was in Washington for the vote, Edwards called it a victory that would allow lawmakers to return to the nation’s priorities.

“Both Democrats and Republicans said, ‘Instead of focusing on using the Constitution as a political tool, why don’t we focus on the things that people face every day in their lives like jobs and healthcare, making sure parents can send their children to college? Is that not what our public servants are supposed to be doing in Washington?’ ” he said.

Mostly, Edwards hewed to the upbeat themes that helped him become Kerry’s chief competitor for the Democratic nomination this year. He talked of his values and of growing up in a small town. He introduced his wife as “the love of my life and the mother of my children.”

He rhapsodized about the state and said how much he had learned from Iowans as he traveled by bus and van to all 99 counties during caucus season -- a feat Edwards said he thought would help the ticket this fall in the state, which Democrat Al Gore narrowly carried in 2000.

Vilsack embraced Edwards and said in a brief interview that the Democratic “change” message would resonate in his state.

“Our unemployment rate actually went up from 3.9% to 4.3% last month,” Vilsack said. “So, this idea of the president’s -- that happy days are here again -- that’s just baloney. And they are saying, ‘This is as good as it gets and the best economy in the last 20 years.’ Well, that’s just not right.”

The morning’s lead story in the Des Moines Register described how Iowa was also sending a higher percentage of its National Guard troops to Iraq than any other state in the nation.

Playing to that theme, Edwards said Kerry would have a higher standard for sending U.S. troops into combat.

After his speech, Edwards pulled off his dark suit jacket, rolled up his shirt sleeves and jumped from the stage to pump hands along a police line. At times, he climbed onto the lower step of the barricades to reach deep into the crowd.

“I saw him speak at Drake [University here] to about 300 people,” said Don Roberts, a van driver for a Des Moines hotel. “And he was something! I felt several times like he looked me right in the eye and he was talking right to me. That is quite an ability to have.”

In Boston, Kerry spent most of the day out of the public eye, taking a bike ride and working on his convention speech. Edwards’ solo campaign tour gave Kerry the luxury of stepping off the trail with the knowledge that a high-profile backup continued to spread the word.

Times staff writers Edwin Chen and Maria L. La Ganga contributed to this report.