John Edwards: President?

Howard Dean, already leading the Democratic pack for president, got Al Gore's endorsement and solidified his frontrunner status last week.

Now, the big question in Democratic circles is: Who will emerge as "the alternative?" The race is far from over, the thinking goes. But it will quickly boil down to Dean against one other candidate – and it could be North Carolina senator John Edwards.

Edwards has been running for more than a year. He's spent more than $10 million on his campaign, and he's a southerner. Every Democrat elected president in the last 40 years has been a southerner: Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

But Edwards has a big problem to overcome: He's seen as too young and untested, which drives him and his wife, Elizabeth, crazy. Correspondent Lesley Stahl reports.

"There's nobody who hates that more than I hate that, I want you to know," says Edwards' wife, Elizabeth. "I'm older, and of course, I actually look my age. And if he would look his, it would, you know, we'd narrow that gap a little bit."

His campaign is actually running commercials - in black and white - designed to make him look older. But it's not just his age. He's a first-term senator, and that's his only elective office ever. Is it too soon for him to run for president?

"That assumes that what most people want in this country is having somebody who spent most of their life in politics. I think most people in this country actually think not having spent your whole life in politics is a good thing," says Edwards.

"I think what they want is somebody who has experience -- both real life experience and experience in dealing with these problems, both of which I have. And I think they also want somebody who has what it takes inside to lead."

Some people also think that Edwards is running for vice president, but he says they are "dead wrong."

He tries to overcome his image problems with fiery attacks on the president: "When I say that George Bush honors and respects wealth, it shows in everything he does."

And his campaign has a consistency: It is entirely based on the contrast between his life story and George Bush's. "My grandmother started out as a sharecropper; my father worked in a mill all his life," says Edwards.

A class-based resentment comes through in every speech: "We ought to make this president explain to the American people why some millionaire investor sitting by his swimming pool getting his statement every month to see how much money he's making - why he's paying a lower tax rate than the people who answer his telephone; than a school teacher or a firefighter! This is not the country you and I grew up in."

But Edwards is a long way from his own working-class roots. Before the Senate, he was a trial lawyer whose personal injury lawsuits made him a mega-millionaire – no longer making him a poor boy from rural South Carolina.

So does he think that President Bush will come after him, and call him a hypocrite, if he gets the nomination?

"No. If you grow up the way I grew up, you never forget what you were and what you are," says Edwards. "It's part of what you are inside."

"The time I spent in courtrooms, representing kids and families against, you know, big insurance companies and big drug companies and big corporate America, I'm proud of that," says Edwards. "If President Bush wants to debate with me whose side he's been on and whose side I've been on, that's a debate I want."

Edwards' pitch is the most distinctly populist of all the Democrats -- Mr. Bush might even call it class warfare.

To hear him on the stump, you'd think the country was still at the bottom of a deep depression. Is he going against what others are seeing?

"You're talking about short-term trends," says Edwards. "I think they feel the long-term trend. I think they feel the change in America over the last two decades for middle-class families. They're not saving money; they're having trouble paying their bills. They know the difference. They know it in their day-to-day lives."

"Helping people buy a house, giving 'em a tax credit to make the down payment on a house, that's different. I mean, I have a whole group of ideas that basically strengthen the great middle class that's struggling so much in this country," says Edwards.

And in championing the little guy, he's even calling some of his Democratic opponents elitist, like Howard Dean. When Dean called on Democrats to embrace southerners with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks, Edwards lit into him at the next Democratic debate: "Let me tell you, the last thing we need in the South is somebody like you coming down and telling us what we need to do. That's the last thing in the world we need in the South."

Edwards' campaign strategy is all about the South, and it's where he says he can win, and emerge as the "anybody-but-Dean" Democrat. And some political pros agree.

Dick Harpootlian, former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic party, hasn't endorsed anybody, but thinks Edwards shouldn't be written off: "I think that John Edwards will gain strength the closer we get to the election, that more and more people are gonna start looking to him as the alternative."

Edwards can't beat Dean in Iowa or New Hampshire, but he does have a good chance a week later, on Feb. 3, in the South Carolina primary.

"If you're going to play well in America, you gotta play well in South Carolina," says Harpootlian, who argues that his state is the first real test of the campaign, since Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire are far more liberal than the rest of the country. "I think the Democratic vote in South Carolina looks more like America, because it's a moderate vote."

Dean, Edwards says, is too much of a New England liberal. Take gay rights. Dean signed a law legalizing civil unions in Vermont for gays and lesbians. But it's an issue that Edwards does not support.

"There are certainly questions of equal rights for gay and lesbian couples. There's no question about that. But as president of the United States, what do you do to move the country forward in a way that doesn't tear the country apart?" says Edwards.

"And in my mind, there's simple things, important things, to treat gay and lesbian couples with the respect that they deserve and they're entitled to. Partnership benefits, no discrimination in the workplace … But not marriage, because I don't think it's the time for that."

He also walks a fine line on Iraq. In the Senate, he voted for the war, then turned around and voted against the $87 billion for reconstruction.

If he becomes president, what is he going to do about Iraq? "The first thing I would do about Iraq is go to the United Nations, do everything in my power to convince the United Nations to take over the civilian authority in Iraq."

Would he pull out U.S. troops? "No, I think that would be irresponsible. I think what we ought to do over time is reduce the U.S. troop involvement. But I think the way to do that is to bring international presence into Iraq," says Edwards.

But isn't this what Secretary of State Colin Powell is trying to do? "Yeah, but he's missing the key ingredient, which is giving these other countries decision-making authority," says Edwards.

Would he allow Iraq to become an Islamic republic like Iran? "I think at the end of the day, Iraq and the Iraqi people have to decide how they're gonna be governed … I don't think it's for the United States to control that."

"I think, whatever I look like on the outside, I think there's an old soul living inside of me," says Edwards, who attributes this to the death of his oldest son, Wade, who was killed in a car accident seven years ago at the age of 16. "He was my best friend. He and I did everything together. We were connected at the breastbone."

"It was Elizabeth, myself, and my daughter Kate, who was two-and-a-half years younger than Wade. And she, all of us, got through it by holding onto each other," adds Edwards, who says he took a six-month break from work after the accident.

"There's a story people tell that when you lose a child, it's like a table, a leg has been chopped off the table. You now have a three-legged table and it just keeps falling, you know," says wife and mother Elizabeth. "The corner just keeps falling every time. And then you find a way, you find a way to make that table stand. And that's what we did."

When Edwards went back to work, he roared back. He won the biggest personal injury lawsuit of his career - a $25 million verdict. And a year later, he won a Senate seat on his first try. A year after that, he and Elizabeth became parents again. Elizabeth had one baby, Emma Claire, at 48, and another, Jack, at 50.

"She likes to tell the story about getting her AARP card when she was pregnant," says Edwards.

"It used to be a problem for women. This is the 'dumb blond' syndrome," says Elizabeth. "People assume that he couldn't be smart -- and he's unbelievably smart -- that he couldn't be serious, because he, you know, he looks like he looks. And that's entirely wrong."

Sometimes nicknames can also do real damage to politicians: "Tricky Dick" Nixon, "Slick Willie" Clinton. Now, there's an Edwards nickname floating around: "The Breck Girl."

"I say they're trying to kill me before I get this nomination … Bring it on. That's what I have to say. Bring it on. I have fought these fights my entire life. Everything I've been able to do has been a great surprise. I mean, even being able to go to college and becoming a lawyer. And then it was, 'He's the young lawyer in court against all these more experienced lawyers. What chance does he have?' And then, 'He ran for Senate and he's never run for office before.' 'What chance does a Washington outsider non-politician have running for the United States Senate … and looking like this,'" says Edwards.

"'How in the world can he do it?' But what people figure out over time is there is a toughness inside of me that can take on any challenge. It is not an accident that I have gotten to this place."