Edwards puts on a brave campaign face

"Nice to see yew," said the candidate, shaking Crenshaw's hand. "I'm lookin' forward to talkin'."

Edwards has made predatory lending a big focus of his current presidential campaign, and Crenshaw claims she is the victim of such a loan. So the man who made his fortune as a trial lawyer stepped in front of the cameras and tried her case in the court of public opinion.

"This is not complicated. It's wrong!" Edwards said forcefully. "These people are being taken advantage of."

Crenshaw, a teacher who is disabled, was grateful that Edwards had lavished such attention on her foreclosed house. But it wasn't enough to earn her vote — not with this season's bumper crop of alluring Democratic candidates.

"They're all so charming, and they all have this compassion and fire about them, don't they?" she said. "It's a hard choice."

Such are the trials of John Edwards. His main Democratic rivals, Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, have bested him thus far in fundraising and national polling. A $400 haircut has generated more buzz than many of his policy positions.

And yet the Edwards machine keeps rolling along, reintroducing Americans to a brand they got to know in 2004: the whip-smart lawyer with the youthful mien and modest mill-town past. He remains confident that Democrats flirting with other candidates will warm to him again, attracted by the fine print of his platform and an accrual of political maturity that he calls "seasoning."

"I spent a lot of time, last time, thinking about being a good candidate," Edwards said in an interview this week in Pittsburgh. "I spend my time now thinking about what I want to do as president. That's a very different mind-set. I think it changes the way you appear to people. And it changes the weight that you have."

If Edwards were looking for forums to display his new gravitas — the trait critics have accused him of lacking — he found them this week, in his three-day "Road to One America" tour, which sought to highlight the plight of the working poor. For the Edwards' campaign description of this road trip, click here. For the campaign's description of Edwards' poverty program, click here.

He met with struggling homeowners, recovering addicts and poultry workers, listening to their stories. As he did so, he showed the world the new face of John Edwards. Gone, for the most part, was the megawatt smile of 2004. In its place was a face furrowed in solemn concern.

On the road this week, he met the enthusiastic and the indifferent, as well as a third, more vexing category of voters: liberal-leaning Americans who were excited to see him but unwilling to commit.

Patrisha Parker, 36, walked alongside the candidate as he toured Crenshaw's Mount Pleasant neighborhood. She liked the fact that Edwards, 54, seemed more serious but still young. "We need a youthful president," she said.

Then she added: "I'm still not going to vote for him."

Signature issue

Edwards kicked off his tour in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward. He was dressed in jeans and a blue dress shirt, the sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms. He walked a devastated block with housing advocates and listened intently with that resolute, squinting face. Camera crews ambled all around.

They stopped at the trailer of Henry Phipps, 63, who was still rebuilding his house. He was wearing a Dickies work shirt and a bemused grin.

He gave Edwards a progress report on his house.

"You gettin' any help from anybody?" Edwards asked, huddling in close with the man.