Click here to watch John Edwards' Tuesday evening speech at the University of Montana.Edwards, the former North Carolina senator whom Sen. John Kerry chose as his running mate for his unsuccessful run for the presidency in 2004, also urged Missoulians to take back their government from the powerful Washington lobbyists who represent insurance and drug companies and the oil and gas industry.
Those people, Edwards said, are in part responsible for our “dysfunctional” health care system and the looming disaster that is global warming.
Edwards, 54, was in Missoula for a one-day campaign stop, and he spoke in the University Center Ballroom to a standing, packed house that waited about 30 extra minutes for him to appear. Edwards, wearing a blue blazer, white shirt with no tie, and khaki pants, was engaging, stopping for brief chats, signing autographs and shaking every hand that reached him.
The crowd, carrying Edwards signs handed out earlier, pressed in to shake Edwards' hand on his way in and out, and they fired off hundreds of cell-phone pictures as Edwards launched a broadside against the Bush administration.
“I try to listen to George Bush as little as possible,” Edwards said to hearty laughter.
Still, listening to the president is unavoidable, and Edwards doesn't like what he hears. He doesn't like the damage he said Bush has done to our worldwide reputation, and he doesn't care for Bush telling Americans to stay home and watch TV while he and Vice President Dick Cheney manage the country's problems.
It's not just that they've done a poor job in Edwards' opinion; it's that that sense of disengagement is un-American, he said. Americans, Edwards said, need to become a force for good around the world. Instead of spending money on wars, why not support programs that make primary school available around the world, that bring clean water to the Third World. America, he said, has an “enormous responsibility to humanity.”
“When we don't lead, there is no leadership,” said Edwards, noting that leadership does not come without some sacrifice.
Like the lawyer he is, Edwards spoke eloquently without notes or a teleprompter, and he swept across a vast landscape of issues in about 30 minutes. He said Congress should send no more bills that fund the Iraq war to the president that don't contain a timetable for withdrawal. If the president won't sign one bill, send him another, Edwards said.
Edwards said that on his first day as president, he would shut down the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that has been linked to torture and mistreatment of prisoners.
“No more secret prisons ... no more torture,” he said.
Moments later, he said: “It's amazing I have to say that.”
The war, he said, needs to end.
“We don't need a surge in Baghdad, we need a surge in New Orleans,” he said after noting foreign news headlines that belittled the government's response to Hurricane Katrina.
Americans, he said, need to “be patriotic about something other than war.”
Edwards also decried an American health care system that leaves 47 million Americans without insurance, and he called for universal health care.
“I will take on drug companies and insurance companies to make sure we get it,” he said.
He said he favors a program that would allow high school graduates who are willing to work 10 hours a week to go to college for free, and he said the United States must do much more to take a leadership role in solving the problem of global warming.
Beyond specific issues, Edwards urged Missoulians and all Americans to take responsibility for the health of their government, and to join him to create a “moral, fair and just America.” Americans, he said, have risen up when their government has faltered - by failing to end segregation quickly enough, by letting the Vietnam War last too long.
Another social movement is coming, Edwards said, and now is the time to take part.
“Your country needs you,” he said. “... Your voice needs to be heard.”
Audio and video online
Click here to listen to all of John Edwards' Tuesday evening speech at the University of Montana.
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