Edwards Set Loose in Key States

He stopped short of calling Dick Cheney a liar, but he raised doubts about the vice president’s truthfulness on MSNBC. He didn’t quite accuse George W. Bush of being a girlie-man, but he jokingly questioned the president’s manhood on late-night television.

And he swept into Oregon a day before Bush, promoting the Democratic ticket in a crucial state at an important juncture, snagging front-page stories in a bid to blunt the effect of the president’s visit.

Sen. John Edwards’ busy schedule and his television appearances this week -- he also tangled with Ted Koppel on “Nightline” -- are a testament to his changing role in the 2004 election and the closeness of the contest between Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry.

After spending much of the summer and early fall in mostly minor markets where his high-wattage smile and sunny disposition attracted little national attention, Edwards has evolved into a high-profile campaigner with a sharp edge since debating Cheney in Cleveland nearly two weeks ago.

Just listen to him at a crowded Eugene, Ore., rally Wednesday, mocking Bush’s performance in the second presidential debate a few days earlier: “He asked a really important question.” A pause. A grin. “This is what he said: ‘My time up yet?’ ”

Or in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on Thursday: “George Bush says he wants to be judged on his record. We want George Bush to be judged on his record. We lost more kids in Iraq in September than we lost in August. We lost more in August than we lost in July. We lost more in July than we lost in June.”

Kerry aides promise that Edwards will deliver more of the same in the shrinking map of battleground states, with the North Carolinian paying particular attention to the Midwest and Florida, where he will campaign today and Sunday.

“The [vice presidential] debate made the difference,” said Joel Goldstein, a St. Louis University law professor and author of “The Modern American Vice Presidency.” “Up until the debate, he was clearly No. 4 of the candidates. Now he’s being deployed in the major states and covered increasingly by the media.”

If there is a vice presidential precedent for Edwards’ evolution, it probably would be more Lloyd Bentsen in 1988 than Al Gore in 1992, Goldstein said. Bentsen, then a Texas senator, had been relegated to campaigning in the South as Michael S. Dukakis’ running mate -- until he shook then-Vice President Dan Quayle with the now-famous debate line: “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”

After that, Bentsen “had a similar trajectory,” Goldstein said, appearing in battleground states, regularly interviewed on national television and a focus of campaign advertising.

Unlike their counterparts in 1992, “Edwards and Kerry have not appeared a lot together on the campaign trail,” said Roy Neel, a longtime Gore advisor. Gore, Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton and their wives “were together a great deal, in part because they wanted to project the team, all four of them -- youthfulness and a good-looking group.”

The Kerry camp prefers to send the candidates and their wives out separately to cover more ground, particularly in the election’s waning weeks. One exception was a chilly Thursday night event in Des Moines, where Kerry, Edwards, Teresa Heinz Kerry and Elizabeth Edwards rallied several thousand supporters in a state they had hoped would already be safely on their side.

During his solo appearances, “Edwards has not disappointed the Kerry campaign in drawing crowds,” Neel said. “He has not skipped a beat in defending Kerry. He did very well in his debate with Cheney. He’s done all the things expected of him.”

In a short, clear campaign speech that rarely varies, Edwards often articulates the Democratic positions more succinctly than Kerry does, as was evident in Iowa, Oregon and Ohio this week.

“John Kerry has a real plan for Iraq,” he said over and over, “starting with speeding up the training of the Iraqis to provide for their own security, speeding up the reconstruction process, making sure the elections take place and, returning to the proud tradition of the last 75 years, America once again leading strong alliances around the world.”

Edwards speaks in complete sentences, arranging his thoughts in neat paragraphs. He rarely gets knocked off kilter. Watching the former trial lawyer for any length of time is like seeing the 500th performance of “Cats” -- precise, workmanlike, utterly effective as far as it goes.

These days, he is venturing toward the traditional territory of vice-presidential-candidate-as-attack-dog. Appearing on “Hardball” Thursday night, he was pressed by host Chris Matthews about Cheney’s different statements on whether there was a link between ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and the Sept. 11 attacks -- a link some think the vice president had once sought to make.

Matthews: “You think he forgot all the times he said -- suggested [such a link]?”

Edwards: “No, of course he didn’t forget. I think it has been very carefully calibrated to keep moving the line each time he talks about it, and it becomes more and more obvious to the American people that there is no connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.”

Matthews: “Does the videotape say he is dishonest?”

Edwards: “The videotape says that what he has been saying is not true. That’s the way I look at it.”

And on the “Tonight Show” on Tuesday, he mocked Bush’s days as a prep school cheerleader, comparing that experience to his own time as a mill town football player.

“I run, and I played a little football back when I was in school. And the president, I think, was there at those football games, too. He was, I think, on the side, maybe with his pompoms?” Edwards drawled, to Leno’s surprise. “Can you run fast with those cheerleading outfits on? I don’t know.”