Edwards’ Reversal Won’t Fly With All

When the United States invaded Iraq, maybe then-Sen. John Edwards really did think it was the right thing to do.

And now, with the benefit of hindsight, maybe the former senator really does think it was the wrong thing to do. We’re prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Still, those just happen to be the same things he would have been saying at both of those times if he had merely been holding up a finger to see which way the political winds were blowing and acting accordingly. So no matter how sincere he may be in his public recantation, he should not be surprised if he finds that many Americans — including some back here where he grew up — have their doubts. We do live in a cynical age, after all.

‘I Was Wrong’

Back when Edwards voted with the lopsided Senate majority authorizing the Bush administration to use force against Iraq, most Americans were in favor of the war. They felt that way not only because they had been sold a bill of goods about supposed weapons of mass destruction but also because they had become convinced that Iraq had something to do with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which it didn’t. (Even now, the president shamelessly takes every opportunity to link the two in his speeches.)

In 2002, it was no secret that Democrat Edwards had a bad case of the presidential bug. As a son of the South who needed to take the edge off his liberal image and move toward the center, he could hardly afford to alienate all those red states in his home region, where support for the war was especially strong, by failing to speak out in support of the Iraq misadventure. So the timing raised at least the appearance of political expediency.

Now, in kneeling at the confession rail and saying, “I was wrong,” the former senator says his change of heart has been brought about by revelations that the intelligence estimates that led to the war — and to his support for it — were deeply flawed.

Trimming His Sails?

Again, he deserves the benefit of the doubt. But again, cynics will point out that he would be saying the same thing at the same time if he were simply trying to trim his sails to take advantage of a shift in public opinion against the war and thus to better position himself for another presidential bid in 2008. And if he had to swallow this bitter pill sooner or later, there probably was no better time — or no less bad time — than now to get it over with.

Edwards made some good and eloquent points in the newspaper column in which he explained his reversal — though Republican opponents will no doubt revel in portraying it as a Kerryesque flip-flop. We can hear them now: He spoke out for the war before he spoke out against it.

“Iraq is a mess and has become a far greater threat than it ever was,” Edwards wrote in The Washington Post. “It is now a haven for terrorists, and our presence there is draining the good will our country enjoyed, diminishing our global standing. It has made fighting the global war against terrorist organizations more difficult, not less.”