The Politician

By Thanksgiving, I knew I didn’t fit in Washington-I was not cut out for that kind of politics-and needed to find a way to return to North Carolina. This is not to say there weren’t some extraordinary moments for me during my Washington duty. Cheri and I got to use the senator’s tickets to see a symphony at the Ke

I Koma watched from afar as a staffer named Miles Lackey maneuvered to replace chief of staff Jeff Lane. Miles made his key move at the end of the year, when he accompanied the senator on a trip abroad that included Afghanistan, where U.S. forces had just ousted the Taliban rulers who had given safe haven to al-​Qaeda. Soon after their return, Lane was out and Lackey was in. At around the same time, another staffer left after a conflict with Elizabeth over the Christmas card list, which had been expanded to include many political figures in Iowa and New Hampshire. Another colleague had so many stress-​related outbursts that he was required to get anger management counseling.

My unhappiness must have been pretty obvious, because eventually John Edwards noticed. I was driving him out to Dulles International Airport (National was still closed because of 9/11 security concerns), and he suddenly just said, “You don’t like it up here, do you, Andrew.”

“No, Senator, I really don’t.”

“You want to go back to North Carolina?”

“Yeah.”

Four

In the spring of 2002, I was one of the few people in the world who knew that Raleigh, North Carolina, was certain to become an important hub for national politics. Presidential candidates usually set up their headquarters in their home area-Jimmy Carter in Plains, Al Gore in Nashville, Bill Clinton in Little Rock -and for John Edwards this meant that a national organization would be run from the capital of the Tar Heel State. As the campaign’s first employee in Raleigh, I was positioned to play an important role that would depend on the skills and contacts I had developed in the state as well as the education I had received on Capitol Hill.

God couldn’t have arranged life better for me. After months of separation and unhappiness, Cheri, Brody, and I were together again. Our lakeside house was finally finished and ready for our second child, who was expected near the end of summer. I figured that now I would be able to spend more time with my wife and child-like a real father-because the senator would be traveling around the country as a president Nial hopeful.

By the time I got back to North Carolina in March, Senator Edwards had already visited six states, including repeated trips to Iowa and New Hampshire, where he a

Supported by the money collected by Jarding and Saunders, the senator traveled from state to state, refining his pitch. At eight different Jefferson-​Jackson Day di

Although I saw less of the senator during this period, he came home often enough for me to notice that he was changing. A year before, he had seemed bored and disappointed by life in the Senate. Now, with the presidency as a goal, he was focused and alert. Sure, he complained about fatigue and run-​ins with people who made him uncomfortable (he still struggled to feel at ease rubbing elbows with some poor and working-​class folks), but I had never seen him more energized and excited. The way he talked, I could tell that he was mastering the issues and getting to know Iowa and New Hampshire better than he knew North Carolina.

Veterans of presidential campaigns say that the early days are the easiest, and this was true for Edwards, who raced into the lead in the competition for donors and national party backers. In both New Hampshire and Iowa, he won over key political figures with his charm and audiences with his Robbins-​to-​ Washington story. “I believe I can be the champion for regular people,” he said in his standard stump speech. “My own life experience allows me to see things through their eyes. They are the people I grew up with, the people who worked with my father in the mill, the people I fought for as a lawyer.”

As she accompanied him on campaign trips, Mrs. Edwards turned out to be popular, too. Unlike other political wives, she wasn’t pretentious or cautious, and she openly tried to make sure the country’s sexiest politician didn’t get too full of himself. At one press event, she even asked the local reporters, “Have you met anyone up here who knows who he is?” In another encounter with the press, she let a writer see her stash her cell phone in her bra as she rushed out the door of her house. People, especially women voters, loved this stuff. She knew it, he knew it, and they played it to the hilt.

The national press loved it, too. U.S. News & World Report put Senator Edwards on its cover at the end of April and made Mrs. Edwards a big part of their story on the presidential hopefuls. A week later, The New Yorker made the senator the subject of a glowing profile that suggested he might be the next Bill Clinton. Writer Nicholas Lema

In protecting the senator, Mrs. Edwards didn’t shield him from her own criticism, which she offered every time she saw him perform at a rally or conduct an interview. She was the one person he trusted to give him honest feedback, which meant that when he bumbled through an appearance on Meet the Press in the spring of 2002, she agreed with the critics who said he looked unprepared for host Tim Russert’s questions and sounded evasive in his responses. In fact, it was the worst TV performance of his career, such an awful and embarrassing display of political sidestepping that he would remember it for years with a combination of shame and anger.

Fortunately, he didn’t stumble very often, and he was a quick study. Months later, he went back on national television-this time it was Face the Nation-and scored points with pointed attacks of Bush administration policies that had squandered a huge federal surplus in order to lavish tax cuts on the rich.