A Dash Of Ego In the Race - What Makes People Like John Edwards Think They Can Lead?

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By David Montgomery Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, January 3, 2003; Page C01

It's one of the all-time great displays of sheer chutzpah: announcing your candidacy for president.

Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) didn't go quite that far yesterday. He said he was forming an exploratory committee. But everybody knows what that means: He believes deep down that he's the right man to run everything -- even with just four years of experience in the Senate.

By the end of the day, it was reported that Dick Gephardt, the outgoing leader of House Democrats, was prepared to announce that he, too, would form an exploratory committee, joining two previously announced Democratic contenders, Sen. John Kerry (Mass.) and Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, with several others waiting in the wings.

It takes a special kind of person to think so highly of his abilities and say so out loud. Every four years, about seven or eight do. The rest of us stare at the ceiling worrying about that stupid remark we made at the New Year's Eve party, or we think we're fat, or we know we're too incompetent to be co-managing a household or raising kids. And then there are those who can smile and earnestly argue that they should be what passes these days for King of the World.

"What is it that swells up inside of somebody and says, 'I can lead us all'?" says Ed Rogers, a Republican consultant who worked in the administrations of President Ronald Reagan and the first President George Bush. Bill "Clinton clearly had it as a very young man. George [W.] Bush came to it later in life."

Surely it's some rare high-test blend of ego, self-confidence, sense of personal destiny and, perhaps, not a little self-delusion.

"A rational person would not do it," says James A. Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University.

-- Anonymous, January 03, 2003

Answers

He's not talking just about the personal toll -- the going gray in a mere four or eight years, the wrinkled mask of worry that becomes your permanent face.

"If you sat down and calculated the probability of Edwards getting through the nomination process, and getting the nomination, and winning -- I'm sure he has a plan, but along the way all kinds of things can happen," Thurber says. "You just take a deep breath and say, 'Geez, why should I do this?' You have to have the drive."

All candidates say they are fired by the desire to serve the public and to help the nation -- and maybe we should take them at their word.

Making his announcement on NBC's "Today" show yesterday, Edwards said he wants to be president "because I want to be a champion for regular people, the same people that I fought for my whole life." (Spokesmen for Edwards did not return telephone calls for this story.)

But there are lots of ways to serve that don't happen to involve being the boss of all bosses. Is this about more than service?

"When you look at the drive and the self-confidence of public officials," Thurber says, "it looks like they're very self-confident. But I think they're also looking for affirmation."

Actually, the job is so huge, the spotlight so hot, the weight of becoming part of history so heavy, that some candidates go through a mental process of demystifying the job, say those who have known presidents and presidential wannabes. This helps a mere mortal imagine that he or she is up to the position.

-- Anonymous, January 03, 2003


"This is true of 100 percent of the people I know who have run for president or thought about it. They didn't ask, 'Why me?' " says Paul Begala, a host of CNN's "Crossfire" who was a top aide to President Clinton. "If they did, they probably couldn't get out of bed in the morning."

Instead, "they say, 'Why not me?' "

Thus, suggests Begala, Edwards doesn't start out wondering why a lawyer from North Carolina with one election to his credit should be president. He looks at Bush, and being a Democrat he's not impressed, and he looks at the Democratic competition, and he thinks, given what's out there, why not?

The White House becomes a much more scalable mountain when you measure yourself against fellow fallible humans.

"The issue is not why John Edwards feels he can run for president," says Dick Morris, a commentator for Fox News and a longtime political consultant for Democrats and Republicans. "The issue is what is there about Tom Daschle or John Kerry or Joe Lieberman or Howard Dean that should induce John Edwards to stay home intimidated."

But Edwards's lack of the sort of political résumé that many presidential candidates traditionally possess makes some wonder whether he isn't setting a new record on the chutzpah meter.

"He's just running because he thinks he can get away with it in this day and age," Rogers says. "He's been running for president since before he got in the Senate."

Yet some said George W. Bush, who had won two Texas gubernatorial races, lacked experience. Once upon a time, John F. Kennedy was just a rich, telegenic senator from Massachusetts.

-- Anonymous, January 03, 2003


"I think we're reaching a point where it's not so much a question of having the résumé come to the job, but having the job come to the résumé," says Morris, who cites Jimmy Carter in 1976, the peanut farmer and Georgia governor whose outsider status "smacked of integrity." Morris says Edwards's experience as a lawyer battling on behalf of not particularly powerful clients may work the same populist magic.

Edwards yesterday addressed those who might question his experience: "At the end of the day, I think the American people and the voters will judge us on our vision and our ideas."

Notice his use of the first-person plural -- "us." Here is another chutzpah booster for men and women who would be president.

Michael Maccoby, a psychoanalyst who has consulted for high-powered corporate and government leaders and written an upcoming book called "The Productive Narcissist: The Promise and Peril of Visionary Leadership," says the individual psychology of presidential candidates is less telling than the group psychology of presidential campaigns.

People mulling a run for high office already have coteries of aides, donors, strategists, groupies and all manner of supporters pinning their hopes on them. It's easier to believe in yourself then.

"It's not like somebody just standing up and saying, 'I can be president,' " Maccoby says.

Even with all that support, and all that chutzpah, the experience can be frightening.

-- Anonymous, January 03, 2003


Gary Bauer, who had no electoral experience and who unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination two years ago, remembers "agonizing about, are you capable of dealing with the wide range of issues that inevitably it will be assumed you will be an expert on. . . . I can recall the first presidential debate I was in, being out on stage with the other candidates, looking at an audience of 1,000 people. It suddenly hit me: One of those people in the audience could ask a question, and the two-minute response time we had would be too long."

Bauer, then head of the Family Research Council and running on a platform opposing abortion rights and emphasizing religious values, is a classic example of one sort of candidate who asks for the job. "I was motivated by a particular philosophy. I felt, obviously, my candidacy would be a long shot, but I could move things just by being in the race, and if there were breaks, then lightning could strike."

Far from a long shot, Edwards seems positioned not unpromisingly in the Democratic field for now.

But even if 2004 isn't his year, this man who would be president, like all people who would be president, can move on with his chutzpah intact.

"It's almost never a bad career move," Rogers says. "Unless you do something stupid like run up a big campaign debt, running for president is not a bad career move."

-- Anonymous, January 03, 2003


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