Edwards' Turn In The Spotlight
The number-two man on the Democratic presidential ticket takes center stage Wednesday night, as Sen. John Edwards gives a prime-time address to party delegates and a national television audience.
Aiming to infuse the Democrats' drive for the White House with youth and energy, Edwards will address the delegates just before they begin the once-every-four-years roll call of states to make Sen. John Kerry their nominee to challenge President George W. Bush in the Nov. 2 elections.
In an interview with CBS News Anchor Dan Rather, Edwards was asked what he'd like Americans to know about him that they don't already know.
"The toughness inside me," said Edwards. "And I think that they've seen enough of me to know that I'm optimistic and hopeful. It's in my nature. But what's hard to see is the toughness that's there. I mean, I have fought my whole life, Dan. I know how tough I can be."
Watch the live webcast of Day 3 of the convention on CBSNews.com beginning at 4 p.m. EDT.
Edwards steps to the podium a few hours after Kerry campaigned his way to the convention city and into the eager embrace of his Vietnam War crewmates. A dozen fellow veterans greeted him, including Jim Rassmann, a retired Special Forces soldier whose life Kerry saved from a muddy river in the Mekong Delta while under enemy fire.
"No retreat, no surrender," he vowed after crossing Boston's inner harbor by ferry for a welcome-home rally in the city that has nourished his political career for a quarter century.
"We are taking this fight to the country and we are going to win back our democracy and our future," Kerry said.
The four-term Massachusetts senator accepts his party's presidential nomination Thursday.
In keeping with the overwhelming security arrangements for the first national political convention since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Kerry's ferry was escorted by Coast Guard vessels armed with 240-mm machine guns as it made the brief trip across the open harbor.
Edwards was Kerry's most dogged rival in the primary campaign. Two of Kerry's other former rivals also spoke to delegates Wednesday night.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio accused the Bush administration of "deceptions" and "fear-mongering. And the Rev. Al Sharpton fired up the crowd with a spirited response to President Bush's speech last week to the National Urban League.
Sharpton prompted a roar of agreement from delegates when he sent this message to the president about the black community: "Read my lips, our vote is not for sale."
Mr. Bush, in his Urban League speech, had asked if the Democrats were taking the black vote for granted and he asked if blacks might be better off by aligning themselves with Republicans as well.
Sharpton, straying from his prepared text, said blacks have not come this far by "playing political games." He said the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and the right to organize came under Democrats.
In excerpts of tonight's speech, Edwards underscored one of the principal themes of a convention scripted to present Kerry as a decorated war hero ready to take command.
Kerry's crewmates "saw him reach down and pull one of his men from the river and save his life. And in the heat of battle, they saw him decide, in an instant, to turn his boat around, drive it straight through an enemy position and chase down the enemy to save his crew," Edwards said of events that occurred more than three decades ago in Vietnam.
Edwards evoked images of today's veterans, men and women wounded in such Iraqi cities as Baghdad or Fallujah, whom he said "deserve a president who understands ... on the most personal level what they have gone through."
"The stars and stripes wave for them. The word hero was made for them. They are the best and the bravest," he said.
To hammer home Kerry's military credentials, a parade of 12 retired admirals and generals, including two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark, came to the convention stage Wednesday in a show of support for Kerry.
Nearly a decade younger than Kerry, Edwards is father to two young children and projects a sunnier, more youthful appearance than the man at the top of the ticket. At the same time, years of honing courtroom speeches to juries has left him with a smoother, more animated and listener-friendly speaking style than Kerry, who has spent the last two decades debating in the Senate.
If the Kerry campaign has sought to make use of those attributes, Republicans already have tried to raise questions about his qualifications to become second-in-line for the presidency.
"Dick Cheney can be president," Mr. Bush declared at one point, an implicit claim that Edwards cannot.
Mr. Bush has spent the week at his ranch in Texas, and spokesman Trent Duffy said the president spent part of the day taping television commercials for the fall campaign.
The White House abruptly switched its tune on the Democratic convention, with Duffy saying Mr. Bush has been "monitoring closely" and has "watched some of it from time to time" on television. An aide had said earlier in the week that Bush didn't watch on Monday and had no plans to do so on Tuesday.
GOP surrogates, who had set up a political war room a few blocks from the Democratic convention hall, spent the week lobbing rhetorical salvos in its direction.
"There has been a total avoidance of discussion of the voting record of John Kerry, but that's not surprising," said Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga.